WU LYF – Go Tell Fire to the Mountain

Indie-rock with a voice that’s certainly … memorable.

Indie
Matt Carney
It’s rare for a debut album’s two most distinct features to conflict so aggressively, and for a band to command them with as much confidence as does WU LYF. This really is an impressive freshman effort, one that commands your attention for its nearly 50 minutes, spread out thick over 10 songs.

 

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know

Womanhood told by a lovely English nymph.

Folk
Matt Carney
Labeling Laura Marling and her British ilk with the awful tag of nu-folk makes about as much sense as nu-metal does, in general. Which is to say, very little.

 

Monday, September 12, 2011

Wilco – The Whole Love

Wilco’s relevant again!

Indie
Matt Carney
As far as Wilco albums go, 1999’s “Summerteeth” and 2004’s “A Ghost Is Born,” are two of the band’s most beloved, but rarely by the same fans. The former, the group’s third full-length, is a joyful romp of Americana indie rock and pop, bubbling along on a turgid undercurrent of relational struggle, drug abuse and loneliness.

 

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Red Hot Chili Peppers — I'm with You

Rock
Kelley Chambers
For some of us, “I'm With You,” the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 10th studio album, is a long-awaited and welcome project that very likely could never have happened. To others, it didn’t need to happen, and is simply more of the same from a group that should have hung things up 10 years ago and spent their time preening courtside at L.A. Lakers games and basking in their own fame.

 

Friday, September 2, 2011

Terius Nash – 1977

R&B’s hitmaker du jour drops his first record sans moniker.

Hip Hop/Rap
Matt Carney
As far as human beings go, Terius Nash may well be one of the most sought-after. Here’s a brief list of songs he’s written/produced for megastars:

 

Friday, September 2, 2011

The Weeknd — Thursday

Damaged and menacing, The Weeknd continue to push R&B to its scariest limits.

Hip Hop/Rap
Matt Carney
I was finishing up college when the then-more-mysterious R&B project The Weeknd dropped their first mixtape, “House of Balloons,” for free online. Unfortunately for 21-year-old Canadian Abel Tesfaye (who’s credited as singer and songwriter) not enough has changed in that time to warrant increased praise for “Thursday,” although that’s not to say he’s produced (with the help of veteran Doc McKinney and the also-mysterious Illangelo) a bad album.

 

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Superchunk – Foolish

A well-deserving ’90s indie classic gets a timely re-release.

Indie
Matt Carney
A few weeks ago I negatively reviewed the packaging of a pair of reissues from Experience Hendrix LLC. Note that I enjoyed the albums’ actual sonic contents, which definitely proved themselves to be two of the best Hendrix documents on the (flooded) market.

 

Monday, August 29, 2011

Sundress — Sundress EP

Nearby rockers dream big.

Rock
Matt Carney
Do you ever listen to Beach House and think, “I’d really like this a lot more if the guitars weren’t so passive.” If so, Denton, Texas, rockers Sundress might just be your new band du jour.

 

Monday, August 22, 2011

Kanye West and Jay-Z — Watch the Throne

Modern-day hip-hop legends pair up to go ‘hard as a motherf***er.’

Hip Hop/Rap
Matt Carney
Hey, have you guys heard of this new rap band called Kanye West and Jay-Z? Yeah, apparently they released an album exclusively on iTunes last week that pissed off a lot of record-store owners. Not sure if you’ve heard of it, so I’ll try to break down “Watch the Throne” for you, since these guys are kinda obscure.

 

Monday, August 15, 2011

The Jimi Hendrix Experience — Hendrix in the West / Winterland

How many different versions of ‘Hey Joe’ do you need to hear, really?

Rock
Matt Carney
I’m absolutely, totally, 100 percent, completely in support of reissues. There is great music in the past that often gets neglected or forgotten once the generation that popularized it ambles a few years into their first mortgages.

 

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Collections of Colonies of Bees — GIVING

Wisconsin instrumental post-rockers return to old form after their Volcano Choir collaboration with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon.

Indie
Matt Carney
Clocking in at just under half an hour, Milwaukee-based Collections of Colonies of Bees recorded a lyric-less gem in their latest offering, “Giving,” strong enough an effort to challenge the current incumbents Explosions in the Sky as our best post-rock build-up instrumental band.

 

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Small Sur — Tones

Doing more with less.

Indie
Matt Carney
Baltimore, Md. is so very rich with quality music right now. Bands like Beach House, Wye Oak and Animal Collective (AC relocated to NYC, but some of their first media coverage came from Baltimore City Paper) have established themselves as national-caliber indie acts with large-scale sounds to boot.

 

Monday, August 8, 2011

Jackie-O Motherf***er — Earth Sound System

Earth to Jackie-O: Do you read me? No? OK, then.

Folk
Matt Carney
Naming your band Jackie-O Motherfucker is the titling equivalent of purchasing a license to record whatever the hell music you want, as far as I and the Americana-experimentin’ Portland indie collective are concerned.

 

Friday, August 5, 2011

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks — Mirror Traffic

Pavement legend still plenty feisty.

Indie
Matt Carney
So what happens when you pair a couple of 1990s indie legends, setting the one known for bizarro, folky hip-hop at the control panel, and the one who famously dissed Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots behind the microphone?

 

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Theophilus London — Timez Are Weird These Days

He’s a long way from the next Kanye.

Hip Hop/Rap
Matt Carney
Judging by the ads Warner Bros. Records is running on Pitchfork, the lack of coverage in more conventional rap and hip-hop media outlets, and hired-gun producer Dan Carey’s résumé (Hot Chip, M.I.A., La Roux), the juggernaut label is marketing Theophilus London’s debut LP, “Timez Are Weird These Days,” toward hipsters instead of a more conventional hip-hop audience.

 

Wednesday, July 27, 2011