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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Rush – Grace Under Pressure LP
Perhaps the most important thing that Rush proved when they released Grace Under Pressure is that (to paraphrase what George Orwell wrote in 1984) the best albums are those which reiterate those things of which people were already aware. In this case, fans already knew that Rush had been the greatest and best-kept secret in…
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JEFF The Brotherhood – Global Chakra Rhythms
It may have taken an unfortunate, poor experience with Warner Brothers to get JEFF The Brotherhood to start pushing the possibilities of what they could do with their music (the label didn’t really love the music and shelved a couple of the band’s releases during their tenure together) but, now that Global Chakra Rhythms is…
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Cancer Bats – Searching For Zero LP
Leave it to Cancer Bats to challenge metal convention by scaling back the production values which are normally strapped to metal albums (“bombastic” is an understatement) and just let the raw aggression and technical talent which is present in every damned microtone of each song be the things which make the album’s stylistic ambition undeniable…
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Dilly Dally – Sore LP
As music in general, Dilly Dally’s debut album, Sore, is incredible (not for nothing did it end up appearing on this writer’s Top Ten of 2015 list) – but the vinyl presentation of the album transcends such praise and offers listeners an experience several steps beyond that of the compact disc. It’s unbelievable. It’s a…
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Circle Jerks – Group Sex
At this point, six years after the band that Keith Morris, Steven McDonald, Dimitri Coats and Mario Rubalcaba started took off (ahem – no pun intended) and brought hardcore punk into a much brighter and broader spotlight before a much larger audience, the history of where OFF came from and the circumstances which got them…
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Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble – A Legend in the Making LP
It’s a far more rare event now than it used to be, thanks to the internet digitally bootlegging music and making it all available for the downloading, but there are some albums which are regarded as lauded and collectible – even now. These albums are usually hard to find (some even digitally) and often develop…
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Harrington Saints – Upright Citizen 7”
This year, Harrington Saints really broke through and made an impression when they bucked their own traditions, crossed pop-punk and Oi and changed their fates forever on the Fish & Chips EP. The change from street-y Oi yo fare which could be instantly accessible to a much larger potential market almost seemed spontaneous; Harrington Saints…
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Eels – Shootenanny! LP
After Souljacker was released, nothing was ever quite the same again for the Eels. Part of it must have felt fantastic because the band really thrived; it was as though Souljacker blew open a floodgate which spontaneously made new sounds, experiments with different moods, vibes and ideas fair game to explore. Liberated, Mark Everett threw…
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Eels – Souljacker
…And then, for their fourth LP, Eels would offer their fans something completely different. Before this point in their catalogue, the band has remained fairly passive and artful in their compositions as well as in the presentations of them (it was all very alt-) but, on Souljacker, the band takes a much more forceful and…
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Eels – Daisies Of The Galaxy LP
It can sometimes be interesting to see what creative decisions and concessions get made after an album has been out for a while and a reissue option comes along. Take the vinyl reissue of the Eels‘ album Daisies of The Galaxy, for example; as was explained by Mark Everett himself in his memoir Things The…