Category: Reviews – Vinyl
Metal still sounds best on large, round pieces of pressed vinyl. The smell, the artwork – and it gets played through a needle.
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Blood Lemon – s/t LP
Blood Lemon s/t LP (Blood Lemon) The beauty of great music – I mean truly great and timeless music – is that while listeners will feel as though they can easily pick out aspects of what they’re hearing and place it among other excellent or classic works, they’ll also breathlessly enthuse about how original that…
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Tom Odell – Monsters LP
Tom Odell Monsters LP (Columbia/Sony Music) When it comes to Tom Odell’s fourth album, Monsters, it’s very likely that listeners will find themselves wondering if context does indeed inform musical creation, to a degree. The reason for that is simple: as soon as stylus a sinks into the A-side of Monsters and “Numb” opens it,…
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The Wallflowers – Exit Wounds LP
The Wallflowers Exit Wounds LP (New West Records) Who wouldn’t love to be Jakob Dylan? Since first appearing with The Wallflowers in 1992, Dylan has kept a “when I feel like it” mentality about his schedule of new releases (seven albums in twenty years – with nearly decade-long breaks along the way – is the…
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The Bobby Lees – Skin Suit LP
The Bobby Lees Skin Suit LP (Alive Records) It gets said a lot, but it’s only in the moment when one actually hears the right sound at the right moment that they realize just how powerful it can be. It’s only in the right moment, for example, that a sound can make a listener’s blood…
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Teke::Teke – Shirushi LP
Teke Teke Shirushi LP (Killrockstars) Without question, Teke::Teke is a creature completely in its own quadrant of the pop diaspora. Does that mean that everything about their new album, Shirushi, stands completely separate from everything else in pop? Certainly not – there’s no question that it’s possible to pick out sounds and ideas which could…
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Spencer Burton – Coyote LP
Spencer Burton Coyote LP (Still Records) The problem that many musicians (particularly those associated with music genres which are usually aligned with “youth” as a concept – like pop, rock and punk) run into as time passes is that, at most, they age awkwardly – if they figure out how to age at all. That…
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Steve Earle and the Dukes – JT LP
Steve Earle and The Dukes JT LP (New West Records) The fact is that no parent ever assumes they’ll outlive their children. There’s a security in that knowledge; at a certain point, parents realize that it’s unlikely they’ll accomplish all the things that they hoped to do in their lifetimes (either for themselves or for…
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Garbageface x Wolfagram – Dymaxion LP
Garbageface x Wolfagram Dymaxion LP (Rap Will Eat Itself Records) Over the last few years, Karol “Garbageface” Orzechowski has used a laptop, a few instruments and a prodigious amount of talent to expand the vocabulary of electronic music, and really gone out of his way to both force change and re-arrange some musical conventions and…
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Infinite X’s – S/T (Standard Edition black vinyl reissue) LP
Infinite X’s s/t (Standard Edition black vinyl reissue) LP (Jealous Butcher/Chainsaw) After Longstocking met its end in 1997, singer/guitarist Tamala Poljak was clearly still riding some residual inspiration when they began assembling the music which would become Infinite X’s’ debut album. When the time finally came to start recording, the group of players assembled to…
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Suzi Moon – Call The Shots 12” EP
Suzi Moon Call The Shots 12” EP (Pirates Press Records) Listening to Call The Shots – the debut EP by Suzi Moon – there’s no way to deny that listeners will be able to recognize a great similarity to the vocal tone and timbres of Courtney Love, but listeners also won’t be able to deny…