Music

‘In My Tribe’ is 10,000 Maniacs’ most popular album, and it’s far more than its reputation as "mom pop" would suggest.

’90,’ the debut album by 808 State, is of its time in the best possible way, enrapturing the listener in its ethereal, acid house waves. Sega-core.

As the title and cover suggest, Prebuild is a compilation of leftover tracks from around the time of Newbuild. As that might suggest, Prebuild is not particularly great outside of being a historical piece. 808 State were very influential to electronic…

"Green Hazed Daze" is good—and I mean damn good. One of the few essential dream pop tracks from the ’80s. Psychedelic, seaside, Beach Boys-esque dream pop.

"I don’t want to fade out/I want to fade in" vocalist Pete Fijalkowski croons on the track "A to Fade In." Unfortunately, fading out is exactly what these British alt rockers did shortly after their arrival.

For better or worse, the first Silent Hill soundtrack is quite different from its successors. While the soundtracks after this one showcased great haunting dark ambient melodies and trip hop influences that made them pleasant even outside of the game,…

The 2010s start off with a bang as Alcest releases their second album. ‘Écailles de lune’ is one of my favorite metal albums, drowning the listener in gorgeous, aquatic ambiance.

‘Billion Dollar Babies’ is a great album marred by horrible mixing and self-indulgence, even if some of the latter makes it endearing.

Alice Cooper returns to the glam rock of his heyday and surprisingly not to his garage punk angle, but rather a new “old” direction inspired by suave cheeky barnstormers like David Bowie and Marc Bolan. This unexpected move is what…

Despite the tough-looking cover, ‘From the Inside’ is Alice Cooper’s most flaccid album yet.

History hasn’t been kind enough to Alice Cooper band, who stand alongside fellow Detroit-rockers The Stooges as the true progenitors of punk rock. Alice Cooper don’t have as high a threat level as The Stooges’s out of control mayhem, but they make…

Name(s): Muscle of LoveArtist(s): Alice CooperRelease Date(s): November 20, 1973 Oh, the humanity. Probably the Alice Cooper group’s most underrated album. Actually there’s no “probably” about it. The four albums before Muscle of Love are quite acclaimed, what makes Muscle…

The attitude and personality is in ‘School’s Out.’ Additionally, the schmaltzy production shows for the first time… but where are the hooks?

Alice Cooper attempts jagged new wave/art rock on Special Forces and fails completely. There is no energy at all in this album. It’s like listening to and watching a stone golem dance in an ’80s night club. I promise you…

‘Facelift’ never digs itself too deep like ‘Dirt’ is capable of, and it’s at least a less exhausting listen because of it. ‘Facelift’ brings you up; ‘Dirt’ brings you down. And some days, I’d rather be up.

“Unplugged” albums are kind of a catch-22. It seems most often that their best tracks are ones that work naturally in an acoustic setting, and that’s usually because they’re similar to their original recordings in the first place. In that…

‘The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here’ gets repetitive quickly. Only a hardcore fan wouldn’t be tired by the middle of this 70-minute (!) album.

It’s time to rock out with your comic out! Let’s spin the ‘American Recordings 1995 CD Sampler,’ most famous for its inclusion with North American copies of the Sega Genesis game, ‘Comix Zone.’

Amon Düül II explores more conventional song structures on ‘Carnival of Babylon,’ but never soars to the heights of ‘Archangels Thunderbird.’

Anathema are a funny little band. They have every melodramatic trope of progressive metal but aren’t heavy enough to be called metal. I think this works to their favor, because it makes their melodrama less obnoxiously… melodramatic. And in some…

The first disc of Selected Ambient Works Volume II is fantastic, but after that, it loses consistency, and it becomes clear that Aphex Twin bit off more than he could chew. There’s just not enough variety to keep this interesting,…

Aphex Twin, my bro, you gettin’ into ’90s and early ’00s video game music? Nice man, that’s my jam. Love that shit. Not as forward-thinking as you usually are, but we all get old. And this isn’t a merely adequate…

Name(s): The SuburbsArtist(s): Arcade FireFormat(s): Album (63:55)Genre(s): Indie Rock / Indie Pop / Indie FolkRelease Date(s): August 3, 2010 I don’t completely understand why some people malign The Suburbs so much. It makes sense Arcade Fire would strip down their…

‘Humbug’ doesn’t sound like stoner rock, but Turner’s strength is his ability to pen catchy sing-along choruses. Restrained energy doesn’t accentuate that.

Arctic Monkeys’ debut album is a second-coming of britpop featuring none other than comedy legend Adam Sandler.

Like the colorful cover suggests, Belle Alliance is goofier and more playful than previous Ashra releases. Its genre is still progressive electronic, but it has the spirit of synthy, ’80s new wave pumping through it. The synthesizers sound like children…

Crush by Astrobite is by-the-numbers shoegaze. It’s too same-y and mediocre to be worth your time. Good luck telling the tracks here apart. Sure you’ve got your fuzzy, noisy crunchers and ethereal, cyclical, slow songs, but those are your only…

Fairly typical ‘60s easy listening pop. But as an album, The Astrud Gilberto Album is better than most. Beautiful arrangements are accompanied by a sweet voice sophistically explaining feelings of love and loss as if they were gospel. You know—the…

The riff in “Not in This Life” is so similar to the Big Black song “Kerosene” that I kept expecting Steve Albini to shout the title. I originally got this album because it had a pretty, purple cover. As it…

Lapsed is so close to being really great. The drone influence is really pronounced, and with their female vocalist they actually sound a bit like Boris at parts. This is straight-up noisegaze, but under the noise there are some subtle pleasant melodies,…

Hex is early morning introspection when your eyes are heavy. The cheapest bottle of alcohol is clutched in your hand as you regret the choices you’ve made with past lovers and miss old friends. Yikes, that was dangerously pretentious, and…

Basically the same style as Red Album with the war-ready riffing but stronger on the progressive side of things. It’s all on that on which you’ll prefer, but I can’t imagine a fan of one not liking the other. Personally I like…

As the cover of Red Album suggests, Baroness are unusually elegant for a stoner metal band. The guitars often have a very clear sound to them. The riffs are catchy and powerful as they march and stomp along in unison.…

Yo, get out of here slow-tempo Belle and Sebastian haters, ‘Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant’ has some of their most immaculate arrangements.

Ah, fuck. On Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, Belle and Sebastian were just a minute too late. Everyone made a big deal about Reflektor, but Arcade Fire couldn’t groove their way out of a paper bag. Turns out Belle…

‘Deluxe’ by Better Than Ezra sounds like a poor man’s R.E.M. Not enough strong hooks here to be a great pop rock album.

If someone told me there was such a thing as “industrial rock” before I had ever heard of any, I would assume the genre would sound like Big Black’s 1987 album, Songs About Fucking. A graceful introduction to an album…

There’s actually two versions of the Sound of Impact live album. Though the second one—which is the album rereleased a year later—is barely documented anywhere, it seems. The rerelease is the same album except Steve Albini‘s banter is separated into…

What’s there to like about a band as repulsive as Big Black? Well, I can think of a few things.

I decided a long time ago, pretty confidently, that I hated Janis Joplin‘s voice. Listening to Cheap Thrills now, I’m not sure what the hell was wrong with me. Not only is her righteous roar undeniably showstopping, but it’s the…

Undoubtedly one of Björk‘s greatest albums, but I can’t imagine myself ever liking Homogenic more than Post. As a matter of fact, even putting aside my personal feelings, I still consider Post to be the superior album. Homogenic falls off…

Meant to explore the voice as an instrument. Almost every sound on the album is someone’s voice. I can’t help but feel that this concept, while very interesting, was underutilized. The album sounds very minimal considering it’s not just Björk—”Medúlla”—singing.…

‘Vulnicura’ is an exhausting listen that rarely breaks form. Björk’s prioritizes sophistication over songwriting in her most stunted work so far.

On Damaged, Greg Ginn is one of the best punk guitarists I’ve ever heard. His semi-droning buzzsaw riffs are sharp enough to probably grind through metal if played at a high enough volume. Sadly, their edge is dulled by Henry…

Paranoid is the “classic” Black Sabbath album, and for good reason. It’s the kind of album in an artist’s discography that’s the most acclaimed because it strikes the best middle ground that appeals to the widest audience. The traditional blues…

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is Black Sabbath‘s greatest album, yes indeed-y. Basically, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath shows further experimentation with the band’s sound that we saw the beginning of in the often haphazard Black Sabbath Vol. 4. This time around, Black Sabbath apply…

Sabotage is my second-favorite Black Sabbath album after Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. There’s much less of a focus on the progressive elements, which “Hole in the Sky” makes clear with its verse-chorus-verse format. Nevertheless, “Hole in the Sky” shows Black Sabbath are…

Black Tambourine return from a two-decade hiatus with ‘OneTwoThreeFour,’ an EP of Ramones covers done in their signature noise pop style.

Autoamerican is Blondie‘s most accomplished album. The amount of varying styles on this album is simply staggering considering they’re a pop band. Whether it’s the lounge pop of “Here’s Looking at You,” or the jazz crooning of “Faces,” Autoamerican is…

Eat to the Beat is an appropriate follow-up to Parallel Lines. Overall not as good, but very acceptable. “Dreaming” and “Union City Blue” (my favorite Blondie song!) drive it home. “Atomic” is also great, but the album version keeps the…

After many wayward years of making mediocre albums and embarrassing attempts at modernizing, Blondie returns after an eight-year hiatus to deliver Panic of Girls, and at this point even a fan would hesitate to listen to a release that by…

A definite step up from Blondie‘s self-titled debut album, but not by much, and Plastic Letters is certainly no comparison to the huge leap the band would take forward next with Parallel Lines. The pieces are all there: Chris Stein’s…

"Shakedown" is Blondie’s worst-ever song, and ‘The Curse of Blondie’ is their worst-ever album. "Good Boys" is the only takeaway.

Box of Secrets by UK band Blood Red Shoes (BRS) actually has a gutsy punch to their sonic assault, immediately putting them above 90% of all their garage rock revival contemporaries. Well, to be fair, while they have the raucous…

Blue Öyster Cult remain a band that tease me. One of those I feel should be made for me to obsess over, but the pieces don’t come together like they should. But I’ll be trying them until I can’t see…

“Beetlebum” and “Song 2” are really great songs, so what the hell happened to everything else on Blur? Sounds like they weren’t even trying with the rest and the album is just a vehicle for those singles. What if it…

“She’s So High” and “Wear Me Down” are pretty good songs, but the rest of Leisure is mostly just serviceable Baggy-Madchester rock. The band tries to cover up a lack of hooks and good melodies with a lot of minor…

In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country sums up Boards of Canada in an easy 24 minutes. Like their albums, half of this is pretty solid, while the other half consists of pieces that sound like unrealized sketches a…

A Boards of Canada album I actually like? ‘The Campfire Headphase’ is the duo’s only album to sound like a complete, unified work.

Definitely a trip, but I don’t find the grooves very inspiring or engrossing, and Boredoms really overextend the reach of them with this 70-minute album. All of the songs naturally move and shift as they go along, which is the…