Author: Bill Adams
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Chemical Brothers – Come With Us
Ever encountered a moment when, through no fault of its own, an album just seems to go under-appreciated and/or just generally taken for granted, reader? It’s not an incredibly common occurrence, but it does happen; every so often, an album will suffer because it really just feels like “more of the same,” no matter how good…
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Old 97’s – Graveyard Whistling
The Old 97’s have been touted as one of the alt-country greats for years now but, really, one of the things that has kept listeners coming back for a while now has been the band’s steadfast refusal to believe their own hype and just try to make an album which comes close to answering it.…
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Five Alarm Funk – Sweat
Without intending to come off as trite, there are occasions when it’s possible to mark certain similarities between a new album and music which has appeared elsewhere in music history, but those moments can still reverberate with excitement because no one saw that music or the connection to anything else coming – from anywhere, ever.…
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King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Flying Microtonal Banana
Listening to King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard‘s ninth album, Flying Microtonal Banana, one is inspired to recall Karl Marx’s fairly damning summation of history’s propensity for repeating itself – “the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce.” In this case, there’s no denying that the fairly delightful rock n’ roll King…
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The Chemical Brothers – Surrender (2LP reissue)
Then as now, the conventional wisdom is that Dig Your Own Hole was the biggest of The Chemical Brothers‘ entries into the mainstream but, for this critic’s money, the greatest creative triumph of the group’s storied career is their third full-length, Surrender. With Surrender, the group had the mainstream’s attention and knew it, but rather than…
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The Chemical Brothers – Dig Your Own Hole (2LP reissue)
… And then, with the release of Dig Your Own Hole, The Chemical Brothers became a pop culture phenomenon. Now, it could be contended that the arrival and immediate public embrace of Dig Your Own Hole was the result of several different factors intersecting. After grunge, Brit-Pop overtook both the charts and popular imagination thanks…
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The Chemical Brothers – Exit Planet Dust LP (reissue)
From the outside, The Chemical Brothers have never really appeared to be an act that anyone associates with the concept of “evolutionary development,” but that is really the fault of shortsighted critics who simply assume that the group’s influence and growth is limited because the music first gained life on a series of dance floors.…
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Flaming Lips – Oczy Mlody LP
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Oczy Mlody LP by The Flaming Lips. It has been pretty evident that The Flaming Lips were in need of a change over the last few releases. The band just wasn’t sure what needed to happen in that capacity and so elected to throw everything at…
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The Wallflowers – Bringing Down The Horse LP
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Twentieth Anniversary 2LP reissue of Bringing Down The Horse by The Wallflowers It might not have been the single most obvious thing, but those who remember the times during which The Wallflowers released their sophomore album know the world was a very strange place from an…
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Our Lady Peace – Clumsy
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the vinyl reissue of Clumsy by Our Lady Peace. With the knowledge of what Clumsy would ultimately become in the context of Our Lady Peace‘s catalogue already a matter of public record (it was a runaway success; it was certified Diamond – one million copies sold –…