Music

Public service announcement: I have recently removed the PX-102 copy of Akuma no Uta from my library to add the PXLP-102 copy. This PXLP-102 copy is the one known by the more popular album cover—that is, Atsuo sitting on a…

Minimal shoegaze Attention Please is as far away as you can get from shoegaze while still being shoegaze. It’s actually a pretty unique-sounding album for the genre and I never gave it enough credit for that before. I have to…

Ball-bustingly reckless, heavy, hard rock with a bit of noise feedback, all backed up by a punk rock spirit. ‘Heavy Rocks’ is possibly the best Boris album.

Hard candy When Boris announced that they’d release an identically titled follow-up to their 2002 fan-favorite hard rock masterpiece Heavy Rocks, people got hyped. And hype is a stupid thing to fall into, let me tell you, because it’s by nature…

I’d call the ‘Pendulum’ EP inessential, but that’d be a lie, because with the short career of Broadcast, nothing is truly inessential.

Pretty wonderful, even if the songs on ‘The Book Lovers EP’ are fairly interchangeable. Broadcast would develop more of their own style over time.

Starts off pretty decent. The gleaming fuzz of the guitar tone reminds me of Blood Fire Death by Bathory, but that album had a lot more going on in it. Even when it comes to atmospheric focus, I prefer more…

Thank you, Camera Obscura, for giving me “If Looks Could Kill.” I haven’t heard such a blissfully perfect pop song since… I don’t even remember. But it’s been my most played song since giving Let’s Get Out of This Country…

Seriously, Music Hole is so much like Medúlla that I wonder if Björk can sue for copyright infringement. Probably not. I prefer the compositions of Medúlla I think, but prefer the voice of Camille. As such, they end up pretty close in quality for…

‘Ege Bamyasi’ is the most bizarre cocktail lounge album ever made, and "Sing Swan Song" in particular is not of this world and invites me away from it. Best Can album and song? Very possible.

Ah, Can‘s Future Days is beautiful. On the beach laying on one of those chair things that bends back and it has the rubber straps with holes in-between them (what the hell are they called). The weather is warm, but…

‘Soon Over Babaluma’ is a pleasant album. All the best Can albums are pleasant. But this is a more ordinary kind of pleasant. It doesn’t reach a spiritual level.

Even the most well-written critique of Blade of the Ronin struggles to escape the desperate fan dream of The Cold Vein Part 2. Every aspect of Blade of the Ronin that sways a little right, everyone says it was wrong…

Some incredible songs on ‘Captain Beyond,’ interesting lyrics, and ferocious performances. I greatly dislike the psychedelic mixing, however.

I love Catherine Wheel as a band. I love their career as a band less. That might sound weird. Another way of putting it is that I want to like them more than I do because I think they have…

Woah, Chrome is pretty fucking cool. Dissonant alternative rock/shoegaze that perfectly captures the aquatic, drowning feel of the album cover. Lyrics are dark, the melodies are catchy and enveloping. A real trip where every song is a stand-out. To me,…

‘Happy Days’ is overly heavy, thick, generic grunge-y alternative rock. A gigantic step down from ‘Chrome.’

The two exclusive songs on the Painful Thing E.P. (“Spin,” “Painful Thing”) are great but really held back by awful production values. Additionally, the two early versions of songs that would end up on Ferment are better experienced there. Rob…

The debut, self-album by Cheap Trick is a fantastic power pop album brimming with smooth melodies, catchy choruses, perfect-key harmonies and perverse fun. Whether it’s the stomping chant-a-long “ELO Kiddies,” the punk roar of “He’s a Whore,” or the dreamy…

‘Cheap Trick’ (1997) follows in the steps of ‘Woke Up With a Monster.’ Same grunge stylings, minus the embarrassing aesthetic. But is it as good?

Cheap Trick has always been a band defined by their peak, which is unfortunate because it creates such high expectations for them. After making four of the best pop rock albums of all time, people naturally had high hopes for…

Sex, America, Cheap Trick is a rather half-assed, unfocused box set. Primarily has rare and unreleased tracks/demos, but also seems to be trying to make a case for Cheap Trick by including some (but certainly not all) of their biggest…

Another one of Cheap Trick’s best post-Dream Police albums, alongside Woke Up With a Monster and Rockford. Special One succeeds their 1997 self-titled, another solid album, but the two albums sound considerably different. In fact, this is probably Cheap Trick’s…

If there’s ever been an album that highlights every negative facet of ’80s production standards, ‘The Doctor’ is it.

After 2006’s Rockford, it would be understandable to call The Latest a disappointment. But it would feel somewhat harsh. It’s a solid album, certainly par for the course for Cheap Trick lately, who showed on Rockford they still had quite…

Cheap Trick loudly announce their distancing from their ’80s rock ballad phase. In ‘Woke Up With a Monster,’ the band adopt traits of grunge and heavy metal. While a bit cringe, it’s undeniably their best album in a while.

The timeless hip-shaking racket of ‘Berry Is on Top’ is enough to give you nostalgia for an age gone past—even one you may have never lived in.

‘Life Without Sound’ is too flaccid. Even looking through the murk, there’s no killer track like "Stay Useless" or "I’m Not a Part of Me." Bummer.

Blue Bell Knoll is the same Cocteau Twins with a different sound. Monotone, atmospheric, midtempo dream pop with Robin Guthrie‘s guitar chords bending around Liz Fraser’s omnipresent multi-tracked indecipherable wails and chants. Also there’s a bass guitar in there somewhere,…

Head Over Heels is the best album by Cocteau Twins. The simple reason for that being that it has the most variety in the songwriting. Lack of variety in the songs is always, always, always the number one problem when…

Not sure what it is about this album, but Heaven or Las Vegas is my second favorite Cocteau Twins release, after Head Over Heels. One of my favorite aspects of Head Over Heels is the unusual dark, mystical songs. My…

Coldplay have been the subject of some controversy amongst more devout music fans ever since their debut album Parachutes garnered them instant success. Despite global success with total album sales of over 55 million records worldwide and universal appeal, the…

Er, how to critique this? The performances just sound so… impassioned. The opposite of what Comus should be. They are almost the exact same as their studio counterparts, just in worse quality. “Diana” is just too abrasive here and not…

An all-time favorite album, ‘First Utterance’ is shocking, anachronistic folk rock that caused a career shift and death of its band, Comus.

It’s not as good as First Utterance and straight-up copies it in some ways, but I don’t really care. First Utterance is still a work of brilliance and one of a kind, I can totally go for something similar even…

First Utterance is an essential album, and the remastering of it on Song to Comus: The Complete Collection is very tasteful and enough for me to consider it an improvement over the original (apparently the first CD issues of First…

First Utterance is one of my favorite albums of all time. I went into To Keep From Crying expecting it to be completely generic southern pop garbage; totally disposable. It uh, wasn’t. I think? As far as I know. I…

(Original publication date unknown) There are few artists as expressive as telling a story as Comus. I wrote a bit about it in my review for First Utterance, particularly for their song “Diana,” but it’s true for their entire library…

Coroner have no album as atmospheric and progressive as ‘Grin.’ However, it sounds somewhat like a transition to a masterpiece that was never made.

It’s hard to tell whether or not I’m judging Self-Non-Self poorly because it’s different from the Cranes sound I love, or because I don’t think they’re good at this style. Let’s go with a little of both. The EP is…

On Creedence Clearwater Revival’s final album, Mardi Gras, John Fogerty bends the knee and allows his mutinous band fellows to at last feature their own material. With the creative legend taking a backseat, the results go about as well as…

A moderate disappointment. With Crystal Castles II, Crystal Castles showed themselves to be one of the most original synth pop groups in a long while. It was a melting pot of just generally good pop sensibilities and had uncommon influences such as witch…

Goddamn, when are Cults gonna pick up that telephone that’s ringing in the background of every song? Must be lawyers chasing them for copying Phil Spector‘s production. It’s a neat gimmick that makes up for the fact that Cults write…

Ugh, the sampled children voices on All the Pretty Little Horses are terrible. Who wants to hear little kids yapping at them in real life? Who wants to hear that in their music? Why does Nick Cave randomly show up…

If ‘Enter’ by Cybotron had more tracks on the level of "Clear," it would be an essential album. But…

It should have come as no surprise to me that after reading Darkbloom‘s hyperbolic reviews greatly praising Grimes and condemning d’Eon in comparison that d’Eon’s half would actually be superior. Logically, Grimes is far more popular than d’Eon, people will…

There are great beats all over ‘Homework,’ but these simple beats often carry too much of the track length, feeling like static fragments of something greater.

‘Black Tie White Noise’ in its entirety defines "cheesy," and is uneventful to boot. Bowie enters the ’90s with a downtempo whimper.

His first album, David Bowie (1967), is completely silly music and lyrics. Utter nonsense. This could be excusable if the songs were good, but they aren’t. There’s a clever lyric here and there that can put a smile on my…

There are some serious hints of brilliance on 1969‘s David Bowie in its beautiful psychedelic/folk songs “Space Oddity” and “Letter to Hermione.” “Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud” and “Memory of a Free Festival” also deserve some mention. Most tracks on…

“Rebel Rebel” is so much better than every other song on this album that it’s ridiculous. Everything else is average glam rock. Average by the Bowie standard, of course. With Diamond Dogs, David Bowie has dragged the glam phase of…

Bowie’s vocals possess his typical rock swagger, and Robert Fripp’s erratic guitar work and Brian Eno’s backing synthesizers all combine perfectly to make "Heroes" one of the most schizophrenic pop rock albums ever made. Move over Ziggy Stardust; this is…

Ho-hum! I love David Bowie. He’s a fantastic artist. Yet, no matter how many spins I give Hunky Dory, I just can’t get into it. I’m not quite sure what it is about it. I think I find the sound…

“Modern Love” and “China Girl” are fantastic pop songs and what make Let’s Dance so frustrating. It’s clear David Bowie‘s songwriting skills haven’t dried up yet with those two tracks, so you get the impression that he isn’t even trying…

Evidently, every time I come back to Low by David Bowie, I’m a little less impressed. It’s a condensed, lightened version of textures that were already thoroughly explored in the Berlin School movement. I don’t see the point. When he…

Initial thoughts on The Next Day: 1. Like most of his later career stuff, a lot of this isn’t bad at all, just uninteresting. Like, “okay, whatever.” 2. If anyone other than David Bowie put this album out, people would…

Tonight isn’t as bad as its reputation suggests, being only a step down from Let’s Dance, which wasn’t a particularly good album by David Bowie standards, but it certainly wasn’t terrible. The singles definitely aren’t as strong, though. “Blue Jean”…

Containing ‘Like Humans Do,’ an art-pop single packaged with early versions of Windows XP, former Talking Heads front man David Byrne delivers this solo album.

Oh no, The Serpent’s Egg is the typical discography progression of following up the album where they hit their stride full of energy (Within the Realm of a Dying Sun) with the same tone but stripped back because the band…

Deep Purple’s third album is the final with their original vocalist. Nonetheless, they deliver one of their most psychedelic, darkest works.