Unsane, Wreck

By J Howell

If there was ever a band I thought would be easy to review, it’s Unsane. Don’t get me wrong—I LOVE Unsane—they’ve been one of my top five or so favorite bands since Total Destruction, and one of the best things about the brutal NYC trio has been their remarkable consistency.

While I’m loathe to compare them to a band I dislike, Unsane is just a little bit like a post-whatever noise rock AC/DC: While there has been marked evolution in the band and its sound, it’s remained focused enough to more or less know what you’re gonna get going in. This is not and has never been a bad thing, as I can’t think of a single band that has remained so remarkably satisfying to listen to year after year, record after record. Just as sure as fans knew the album cover would be drenched in blood, it can easily be said that longtime fans of the mighty Unsane won’t be disappointed with Wreck.
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John Singer Sergeant

By Jemiah Jefferson

Riffing on the name of the famous 19th Century painter, this intriguing solo project by Apples in stereo alum John Dufilho is a delightfully mixed bag of influences and styles, with each song featuring a singer other than himself. Most of the other instruments are performed by him, though, and as befitting his Elephant 6 associations, he’s good-to-excellent at all of them.
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Jherek Bischoff, Composed

By Less Lee Moore

Singer/songwriter/producer/etc. Jherek Bischoff spent years working on Composed, which makes its brevity perhaps surprising. The album is fewer than 40 minutes in length, yet it’s anything but slight. Each composition is quite literally bursting with ideas.

Even though Bischoff wrote most of the music (with the exception of an arresting cover of English folk-pop singer Bob Lind’s “Counting”), Composed is an exceptionally collaborative effort. Most of the singers wrote their own lyrics and the 20+ musicians who contributed to the album didn’t even perform in the same room together; the liner notes indicate that many of their instrumental tracks were recorded at their homes or various studios individually.

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The dB’s, Falling Off The Sky

By Less Lee Moore

It’s been 25 years since the dB’s recorded an album; it’s been 30 years since they recorded one with the band’s original lineup of Peter Holsapple, Chris Stamey, Gene Holder, and Will Rigby. Understandably, expectations run high and the urge to compare this new album to their previous ones is strong. As a fan, I wanted to try and avoid this in my review, but damn it if each song on Falling Off The Sky doesn’t sound exactly like the dB’s! Which is a good thing, trust me.

Let’s be clear: the songs on Falling Off The Sky aren’t those of old fogeys. Okay, maybe Holsapple and Stamey can’t hit the high notes like they did in the early ’80s, but there is not one boring or stodgy moment on this album.

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Prometheus: More Than A Spectacle

By Paul Casey

You will see Prometheus. Of course you will. If you have even a modicum of space knowledge of Ridley Scott, you will. Alien, Blade Runner, Prometheus. Even if this is a space version of Robin Hood, you have to see it. Ridley Scott is as important to science fiction cinema as Stanley Kubrick. We all know this. In spite of the cynicism and waiting Internet doom machine, you have no choice but to see this movie. And when you do, you need to see it in 3D.

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The Lowbrow Reader Reader

By Michelle Patterson

Let me preface my take on The Lowbrow Reader Reader which a bit of nostalgia: When I think about the candy I had as a child—the kind that I tried to sneak under my parents’ radar because of the illicit pleasure of spending my allowance on the various toxic-looking treats at the corner store—I only get nostalgic for a few of them and upon closer inspection, my choices were pretty telling. The soda candy, in which the soda-type-liquid is encased in tiny, hard plastic bottle-shaped blobs, was some of the foulest-tasting candy on this earth, both past and present, but I still sucked that down with joyous glee. Candy cigarettes, in both hard and gum form, actually evinced a chuckle from my mom when she did find a pack in the back pockets of my shorts, while doing laundry, because she used to “sneak them,” as well.
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Ode to a Poet’th Poet: Ernie Kovacs, Percy Dovetonsils . . . thpeaks

By John Lane

Let’s start the proceedings with a heartfelt ode to Omnivore Recordings for bringing to light a long-lost and rumored (but now real!) holy grail in comedy history. That grail is Ernie Kovacs: Percy Dovetonsils . . . thpeaks
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More Modern Noir: Max Payne 3

By Paul Casey

Noir has been having a good time in video games, over the last few years. Quantic Dream’s high profile Heavy Rain, and last year’s L.A. Noire (which we reviewed here) both used noir as their foundation. Max Payne 3 arrives as the third in a trio of story-driven, highly stylized games indebted to the classics—Raymond Chandler, John Huston, anything starring Humphrey Bogart—as well as modern creators who have ensured that noir and hardboiled fiction stay vital—James Ellroy, Frank Miller, Michael Mann.

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Charlie Parker; Dizzy Gillespie; Bud Powell; Max Roach; Charles Mingus; The Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall

By Jemiah Jefferson

This new remaster of The Quintet: Jazz At Massey Hall—a truly historic convergence of five of the most celebrated musicians in jazz—is so classic, so iconic, that at first it’s hard to understand what’s so special about it. It really does take some schooling, and some careful and studied listening, before the true magic trick is revealed. For anyone with an interest in jazz, however, this album is essential listening, and can be enjoyed without knowledge of its importance.
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Thelonious Monk, Misterioso

By Jemiah Jefferson

It must have been a thrill for audiences in 1958 to imagine that the performances they witnessed in smoky nightclubs could be recorded and released as brilliant record albums to be savored and studied at home by those less lucky than they. I doubt that many of them could have imagined that more than fifty years later, those same performances would be captured on a shiny silver disk, played back by a laser beam, and savored and studied just as avidly. It’s also possible that the audience listening to what would be titled Misteriso, the live performance by the Thelonious Monk Quartet at the Five Spot Café in New York had no idea of future audiences or listening technologies at all, being entirely too occupied in experiencing the delights of a genius at the peak of his abilities.
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