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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Cancer Bats – The Spark That Moves LP
When a band gets six albums deep into their career, history has illustrated that one of two things happens: either the group releases a career-defining album, or they release the worst shit shingle in their catalogue. For every British Steel, Iron Fist, Machine Head, Divine Intervention or Sound of White Noise, there are also albums…
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City and Colour – Guide Me Back Home (3LP)
I must confess that, most regularly, live albums don’t thrill me. City and Colour albums do not often thrill me either, for that matter (long story short, while I was a big fan of Alexisonfire back in the day, I found the first two City and Colour albums staggeringly overwrought); I don’t know that I’d…
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Jon Spencer – Spencer Sings The Hits LP
That the fidelity, equalization and overall sound found on a vinyl recording is unmatched by any other musical medium to date is a claim which has been proven several times over in many places by a great many people (including by several in this column, several times over too), and one of the great examples…
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The Traveling Wilburys – Volume 1 (Picture Disc reissue LP)
The term “classic” gets thrown around a lot and, often, where the term isn’t actually deserved. A true, genuine-article classic is a thing that sets an enduring impression and standard to which others aspire, and/or would claim to be of a similar lineage; it’s an important portrait of a moment. The Traveling Wilburys’ first album…
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NOi!SE – Mass Apathy 12″ single
It might not sound like the single most glowing endorsement of a single on the surface, but the first thing that NOi!SE‘s new, milled “Mass Apathy” single illustrates is that it’s never wise to underestimate a novelty, or write one off. The bullet casing silhouettes which encircle the exterior rim of this one-sided single (the…
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Dad Brains – EP (7”)
Now over forty years since it first appeared, it was inevitable that punk rock was probably going to take on something that resembled a fatherly voice, somehow. How could it not? With Green Day having made concept records already and both Fat Mike Burkett and Mike Watt having produced punk rock opera albums, punk and…
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LIGHT // SOUND – s/t LP
Since childhood, we’re taught to never judge a book by its cover or be so superficial as to make inferences about a person’s character based solely upon their exterior persona. It’s good advice – not making snap judgements about the contents of an article or individual by the first sight one sees – but that…
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Hamell On Trial – The Night Guy at The Apocalypse, Profiles of Rushing Midnight (LP)
In the spirit of full disclosure, yes – am a fan of Hamell On Trial. I was totally won over by Ed Hamell when the singer’s eighth album, Tough Love, came out in 2003 and have excitedly checked and given consistently positive coverage to each album that has come along since then. I can say truthfully…
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Urge Overkill – Saturation LP (reissue)
Quick history lesson: By 1992, Urge Overkill had already established itself both in the fairly unforgiving Chicago music scene and on the North American college radio circuit with the help of albums like Americruiser and The Supersonic Storybook. Not only that, the band has cut a fairly striking and peerless image; unlike so many other…
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Wild Moccasins – Look Together LP
In the context of New West Records’ stable of artists, Wild Moccasins stand out as a truly unique entity. Most of the other artists signed to the label have their roots in musical forms and structures linked clearly to rock instrumentation and styling, but Wild Moccasins don’t so much rebel against that paradigm as simply…