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Album Reviews
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By June Swoons
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Thursday, 15 May 2008 |
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Aranos -
Tax
Pieros 2007
Capitalism.
The word
provokes serious political debate. The kind that is best avoided in the company
of surly foreign nationals at your local watering hole.
Nevertheless,
the topic has made for some great anti-establishment songwriting, even if it is
hackneyed and polemic these days. Or is it?
It's safe
to say that 21st Century America
wasn't deceived
for the first time when the phase "fuzzy math" driveled from our
fearless leaders' lips in 2000.
See, today's
free market economy has plenty of new virtues. Like rewarding corporate America for disguising
our sweatshop textile dependency with arrogant globalization tactics. Like
utilizing today's trade programs to exploit cheap labor abroad.
Meanwhile,
tell folks in Detroit
that unemployment is better
now than in the 1980s and you might find yourself walking away backwards...very
slowly.
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Album Reviews
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By Red Lehman
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Monday, 12 May 2008 |
The Celebrity Orphans - The Celebrity Orphans
Self Released (2008)
If sex came in tubes of toothpaste, The Celebrity Orphans squeeze out 39 minutes worth on their new self-titled album. Up-tempo rocksters like "Hello," "You Got Nothin," and "Let Me Tell You" are ferociously danceable with BC Campbell and company telling the entire world just who's doing the messin' around now.
Take a listen to slinky "Hello" and you can imagine mister broken-heart deciding he was done being the victim: "notify my next of kin...cause you and me are gonna sin." Or take the delta-bluesy "Let Me Tell You" where BC announces, "Listen my pretty to my little ditty cuz what do you got to lose?" Slow burners like "Broken Night" and "I Need You" (with beautiful, haunting back-up vocals from bassist Angelina Baldoz) draw comparison to Chris Isaac while the terra firma terror on "Rollercoaster" and the bouncy 70's "Car Crash" compare favorably to the Talking Heads.
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Album Reviews
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By Chris Klepac
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Monday, 12 May 2008 |
Tapes n' Tapes - Walk it Off
Beggars Xl Recording (2008)
The buzz around Tapes n' Tapes is that they were one of the first "blog bands" brought to real world fame by an enthusiastic Internet campaign. The truth is that they are just some nice boys who met at Minnesota's Carleton College and put out a couple of albums of catchy indie rock that is somehow both austere and funky.
2005's The Loon introduced a mix of earnest, slightly goofy confusion and tight, ornate rock songs that hearkened back to Spoon, The Feelies, and The Pixies. Their second LP, Walk It Off, is more lush but hardly more subdued.
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Album Reviews
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By Matt Ashworth, High Potentate
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Thursday, 01 May 2008 |
Black Mountain- In the Future
Jagjaguwar Records (2008)
If you would have told me six months ago that I’d spend the first half of 2008 gushing over a record steeped in the classic rock sounds of the 70s I would have probably scoffed pretentiously and muttered something about the forthcoming Magnetic Fields album.
Enter In the Future: the sophomore release from Canadian retro-rock revivalists Black Mountain. Ten perfectly executed tracks of booming, intricate rock and spooky folk woven in to a flawless tapestry of awesomeness.
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Album Reviews
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By Nada Overlord
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Monday, 21 April 2008 |
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The Beltholes
For Whom the Beltholes
Burn Burn Burn
Records (2007)
By Red Lehman
I had no
idea how to start this review. I considered an analogy to being “on the last
belt hole” after eating too much turkey or mentioning that the album has a
sample of “Stayin’ Alive,” mentions Eddie and the Cruisers and ends with the
word “cocaine” and a cat’s meow. None of these sounded opener-worthy.
Thankfully,
when the band took the stage during a recent Tractor Tavern appearance,
guitarist Kurt Bloch summed it up nicely: “If the last song wasn’t your thing,
then your song is coming up next.”
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Album Reviews
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By P.W. Richardson
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Monday, 07 April 2008 |
The Pack A.D. - Tintype
2007 Mint Records
The Pack A.D.
is a duo from British Columbia
championing the old-skool sound. Each track on their 2007 release Tintype, on Vancouver's Mint Records, is a blast of raw emotion
and minimalist technique.
Maya Miller & Becky Black, drums and guitar/vocals
respectively, have managed to bring together a unique vision for the
tried-and-true duo-rock approach (White Stripes, Black Keys, The Shotgun). They
keep it simple and maintain a blues ethos that could be traced straight back to
the likes of Robert Johnson by way of Howlin Wolf, Etta James, Tammy Wynette,
and Chan Marshall.
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Album Reviews
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By P.W. Richardson
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Tuesday, 18 March 2008 |
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The
Oswald Effect
Battle
Hymns of the Fifth Column
[Self
Released; 2007]
The
Oswald
Effect
capture a broad range of influences and come out the other end with a
unique blend of cool on their self-released debut LP Battle Hymns
of the Fifth Column. The album is a dark jest at the power of
money and the corruption of humanity, on which T.O.E. tackle a
bizarre array of grim topics – from incest to assassination –
in an eleven-song tongue twister.
T.O.E.’s
sound is rich with the warm crunch of loudly ringing guitars. Heath
Bauer’s vocals are insanely raw at times, swinging from
crawling word play into jaguar screams at the drop of a sixteenth
note.
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