Shinobi Ninja are such a family affair: D.A. and Baby G on one side, twin brothers guitarist Dave and drummer (in my opinion one of the most powerful drummers around Mike on the other, and Alien X and DJ Axis Powers in the middle: the three parts come together as more than a whole; everybody feeds off each other.
What drags me is the slower serious one, I get that the world needs adults, but “Holding On To You” is a lugubrious mess and makes you wonder how far this heart on sleeve stuff is gonna take you when you’re content and the closer “Another Sunday In The South” drags her to the finishing line.
I was watching a documentary called “Happy” the other day, in which the filmmaker seemed to believe that the greatest thing in life is happiness. But it isn’t at all. The greatest thing in life is to feel completely alive. Hearts Of Sorrow is completely alive.
For a first album, it is totally remarkable and unique, Kan Wakan have built a mysterious and magnificent sound and their musical approach matches the art cover of their album, it is a symphonic super-production, both colossal and Sisyphean.
Numbskull – Wesley Wolfe – Art pop masterpiece about dealing with lowered expectations and doing it yourself and really not compromising too much on the road to eternity.Maybe a coming of age or maybe a dealing with it.
And then you hear the sound of a bottle of beer being poured for “Thirsty” and already you’re turned off and the following hour, yes hour, of music is all over the place. God knows we don’t need babies gurling, it didn’t work for Beyonce and it doesn’t work fo rCarey
This is the worst album Conor has ever released, a deeply disappointing lie. Poor lyrics, over arranged songs, which, while his sense of melody is still intact, his sense of arrangement is sodomized and a sound so tasteful you’ll wanna puke, and a vision of the world that beggars belief.
None of this is anybody’s greatest achievement but for all its size, for its almost humility despite being a meeting of two huge stars, still it stands head and shoulders above so much stuff. A fine EP, a great way to spend 35 minutes of your life.
It doesn’t feel like Bright Eyes, or Desa, or Monsters of Folk- it’s a legitimate Conor Oberst album. This tune has a little bit of everything for everyone, lovely harmonies and a fantastic surrealistic almost movie-soundtrack backtrack.
Rambunctious and sloppy and chaotic and hysterical with songs that you can both sing with and scream along to. If you’ve forgotten how thrilling traditional rock ‘n’ roll can be, this is one hell of a reminder. Play it loud. Knock back a few shots. Piss off your uptight neighbors.
After listening to this damn thing more times than I wanted to in my worst nightmare, I guess it isn’t… no, it is terrible. I guess I like Dan’s falsetto here and there and Patrick is a good drummer but it is a bad album which just plain doesn’t add up and any particular time. Well played and deeply felt, it is over arranged and enervating.
Oasis rode this sound hard for years and years to great effect. It was like my bloody valentine without the artiness, the Beatles without the soul, the new art school of punk burnt to the ground and rebuilt. Like punk, it was working class, grimy boots nowhere land. You know how young Morrissey was bullied in his youth? Noel and Liam were the boys doing the bullying
The difference between Better Days and Blue Smoke, is the former had all those great songs off the musical and the new one doesn’t and the songs are a little stale. “Miss You-Miss Me” is sweet but a little bland, “If I Had Wings” is so obvious you wonder why she is bothering. The “If I Had Wings” followed by “Lover Du Jour” stops the entire album in its tracks and it never recovers
Of course, it wouldn’t be in the guys’ nature to not have a single tear jerker on the record. “Smooth Jazz” is so depressing I can hardly stand it. I can’t help but have my eyes well up when I hear the beginning notes.
Opening with a remake of Mike’s “Circle Sky” (originally recorded for the film Head in 1968) which doesn’t touch the hem of the original, but has a certain garage band charm that puts its theme of “it looks like we made it once again” into the basket for a good first salvo.
Ghost Stories is the real thing, it feels like the real thing, the ache on “A Sky Full Of Stars” is real, but Coldplay can’t put it across, they can’t sell it the way Beck could. Not one song here had been running for the eject or the repeat, nothing moved me to tears, and nothing quite moved it either
Numbskull maybe be tired but it doesn’t sound tired, what ever might bother him doesn’t effect his music, or maybe it just make him use his arrangement gifts to change your ear levels, to make you hear what he wants you to hear. Wolfe won’t wrap it up in a pretty bow but he doesn’t have to. It stands as a rarity: ten perfectly crafted progressive pop songs.
It is really a first album the way first albums are meant to be, it’s like Khan couldn’t stop himself and just had all these ideas and had to run with them. The Deluxe version includes a song with Professor Green and a cover of “Get Lucky”. It’s like a vacation and a time to indulge yourself.
Numbskull maybe be tired but it doesn’t sound tired, what ever might bother him doesn’t effect his music, or maybe it just make him use his arrangement gifts to change your ear levels, to make you hear what he wants you to hear. Wolfe won’t wrap it up in a pretty bow but he doesn’t have to. It stands as a rarity: ten perfectly crafted progressive pop songs.
I can’t take more than ten minutes combined of the album but I don’t like her at all, if I was a fan I’d be quite pleased and even as a person who has done his entire life but poke fun at her… it is the best I could’ve hoped for.
the dfifference between this album and Bottle cap albums like 2004’s The Jig Is Up, is not the banjos as such but that this is even wollier, coolier, friskier and friendlier. It is the strangest of albums, a series of jams in various keys which adds itself to a vision of a world that doesn’t exist now
Lily has put herself up in battle with her peers and while that may well be a little silly, if you take it at face value it is a fight she has absolute won. Sheezus is a damn good album whatever Lily might think to the contrary.
It is all very studio driven and also all very deeply and quietly felt but unlike a little too much alt r&b it sounds very good as well, it isn’t flimsy and the songs have sticking power. At some point, SZA has to go further along than this chill jazz r&b sound. But not right now.
Z – SZA – New r&b gets it right for once; temperate but crazed, sexual mood music by SZA,with the obligato rap added by the likes of Chance The Rapper who exactly captures the mood of hazed out sex; pure seduction and she doesn’t even know if she wants you.
ason’s voice is better than ever, strong and passionate, and he’s forever one of my favorite vocalists. When it shifts from a slow ballad to an upbeat fast paced punk tune, it’s impossible to not get up and dance. It’s amazing to me how these three guys can create such a massive sound
There are several good covers, a Yoko Ono here, a Bob Dylan there and a Lana Del Rey everywhere: they all work pretty well albeit not very well, his best solo album by a lot shot but it misses that one sure shot to get him back where he was
This is a terrific, smart hard, fun… maybe the best album of the year, certainly a glorious surprise to hear the band still able to crank it up and out. They are gonna have a blast playing it live. A couple of months ago I was planning a “the decline and fall of Rhett Miller” article. He ain’t done yet.
The Kooks artistic decline continues unabated and it is really a pity because somewhere or the other they have that something that can lead to real rock success stories. . Lay off the birds, Luke, write better songs.
Damon ties nostalgia to luddite wisdom to romantic disillussionment and comes to the conclusion that modern technology is turning us into robots of sorts. We suffer from a form of emotional malaise. we are forgetting how to feel. The problem with that is it isn’t true. This is a bad album of torturous songs
. While it doesn’t fit together as a theme or even as a presentiment of country, it does as a collection of strong songs from the same pen; a vision of a sound that will always have an audience.
Their childhood calls back to them and they want to return to it, like a rug that stops the door for slamming. What’s wrong with the guy? Why this upsetting, heartbroken song after song after song? Some girl?
Take any song out of Quack out of context and it will work as pretty fun dance, many of these racks were fun singles, but when you sit and listen it as an album you their jokiness because smugness
“Red Wine” is where the superstar falls to earth. It isn’t by any stretch of the language a stinker, and one song, a cover, is among his best moments on the album in segments exercise, still it isn’t the best of the EPS either.
Cray sounds soulful but distracted on “Fine yesterday” and neutrally intense on the more bluesy Isaac Hayes “Your Good Thing Is Going To End”. The beat drags a little. The Booker T tribute “Hip Tight Onions” pumps that organ real well and holds a groove for every single minute but it is the exception not the ru
This is a steamroller of an album, half an hour of heads down no nonsense rhythm and scowl. Daltrey is amazing on a four song run to end the album and Wilko is a study in swift, clean guitar parts.
In tribute to Imans ability to see Cat live at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, I spent an entire day listening to his catalog. I then went on to provide you a nice consumer guide to most of the discography. No muss, no fuss, just the facts.
My bet is this is it for Hold Steady. Finn’s solo album was much better that the two Hold Steady albums surrounding it on either side. The sonic bang bang of the band, the tightness, groove, whatever, can not replace the lack of anything approaching a memorable song.
Though quite ‘mainstream’-sounding and not as pop punk as it claims, it’s a good listen and a good starter album for anyone getting more into said pop-punk scene. It’s well done, very smooth, and ridiculously catchy.
So are they the new Italian QOTSA/FooFighters? I don’t know but they are strong candidates, and the band even pushes the joke by posting on their Facebook page, photoshopped pictures of famous bands/musicians (Nirvana, Josh Homme) holding a sign reading ‘The Nuv Sucks (No, Really)’.
The Take Off And Landing Of Everything – Elbow – A sort of uncool, unelectronic, art band on their sixth album and first post-major breakthrough and they manage to top just about anything they’ve even done with the possible exception of “My Sad Captains”
Great pop thrives on consistency but great art lives on experiment and Solitaire feels experimental in the best sense. It keeps going places you don’t expect it to and as songs you could cull up quite a few kickers here but as an album you have to put too much trust in Frank to get you there.
True went too deep into the vocals and became a mainstream pop album and if it was left at that fine, not my cup of tea but what else is new? But it didn’t. Avicii portrayed himself as the second coming and the album couldn’t withstand the scrutiny
It’s 13 tracks, each by a different artist associated with the label. What drew me to it was the fact that Alex G, Ricky Eat Acid, and none other than Elvis Depressedly, were involved.
But in the end, it really is a consistently pretty good album. It doesn’t sound like there has ever been a time when it would be a huge hit but it also isn’t a drunken mess, it is a real thing.
So if you are in the market for four takes on “Candle In The Wind” and, astoundingly enough, four versions of “Grey Seal” on and on and only the non-LP B Sides worth your while and not many of them , this is the album for you. A stupendous horrendous bore
Easy to miss, because maybe Perrett was missing it himself (though on a song not on this album he would note “drugs are one thing we have in common”) , love drugs and death make a triumvirate and Peter moves from one to the other .
They’ve moved on from writing about their daddy issues and having a harder sound to settling into something that I think feels more comfortable for them and they’re not forcing anything.
In the mid-1990s I went back to the Bob Dylan of the 1980s and revised my opinion of his work that decade. At the time I thought it was a disaster, but with five years between myself and the end of the decade, I found myself returning and reappraising
Sleeper Agent have what early Rilo had and Paramore circled but didn’t quite nail down; melodic pop rock melodies by the bushel; they have so many they’d don’t seem to need deep album cuts, or the arty ones, or the prolonged jams.
Started in ’99, they’ve released some killer albums, toured with big names, and really built up a massive reputation. They’re positively iconic, and their new album, “Happiness Is” just furthered my love for them and their music.
