Tag: review
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Mastiff – Leave Me The Ashes Of The Earth LP
Mastiff Leave Me The Ashes of the Earth LP (Entertainment One Music) There has always been something which felt a little off about really aggressive metal (or Doom, or Sludge, or maybe Metalcore – pick your favorite undervalued sub-genre) – as greasy, heavy or dirty as it might get, there’s always an inherent clarity about…
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Plizzken – …And Their Paradise Is Full Of Snakes LP
Plizzken …And Their Paradise Is Full Of Snakes LP (Pirates Press Records) The fact of the matter is that, in punk circles, no one wants to be a “middle of the road” kind of band. Why? Well, as Dwight Eisenhower once said, “The middle of the road is all the usable surface. The extremes, right…
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Neil Young – Young Shakespeare LP
Neil Young Young Shakespeare LP (Reprise Records/Warner Brothers) One of the more interesting things that has happened since the CoVid pandemic basically put the entire North American live music schedule up on blocks for a while has been the outflow of live releases which have appeared – a cultural moment at which Neil Young has…
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Neighborhood Brats – Confines Of Life LP
Neighborhood Brats Confines Of Life (LP) (Dirt Cult Records) I confess that I spent most of my first play through Confines Of Life, Neighborhood Brats’ third full-length album (and my first exposure to the band), just trying to figure out where to start with it. Somehow, it just wasn’t easy to effectively catch or contain…
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NEEDLES//PINS – s/t LP
NEEDLES//PINS s/t LP (Dirt Cult Records) There is something particularly special about self-titled albums – the unspoken rule is that, when a band puts its name on an album like that, it is intended to exemplify just exactly who that group is at its core. A self-titled album is a statement of a band’s personality…
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Round Eye – Culture Shock Treatment LP
Round Eye Culture Shock Treatment LP (Sudden Death Records) It may have taken a while for the band to finally get all the paperwork signed and all of their distribution ducks in a row (technically, Culture Shock Treatment was completed in 2020 and Paper + Plastick Records released it digitally late last year – but…
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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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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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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…