07 January 2012
This album’s genesis is the result of the relentless pursuit of a trio of composers to engage in a purely original, unhampered, and genuine creative process. The production team of Poli, Ferne, and Pignanelli clearly prioritized the need to craft an album through an organic process and this notion seeps through in everything from their [...]
06 January 2012
The music industry can be a stifling place for an artist. The constant pressure to produce a commercially successful product combined with the lack of complete creative control ends up wearing down the psyche until a band “calls it quits.” This was the story of Under the Influence of Giants though the only difference was [...]
05 January 2012
By the early 1930s, the majority of the Midwest agrarian community had become “tenant farmers”—those granted land from the banks in exchange for rent or a percentage of the harvest—under economic pressure from rising corporations and the overpopulated land of the “New Frontier.” The farmers had ceased growing grain, replacing it with a cash crop [...]
04 January 2012
Purple Naked Ladies is the new album from The Internet; a duo which is made up by Syd the Kid and Matt Martians (of Jet Age of Tomorrow), who are two members of the Los Angeles outfit Odd Future (Wolf Gang Kill Them All). Prior to this album I had not realized Jet Age of [...]
03 January 2012
What type of hip hop gets your blood pumping? Is it the deep bass, vibrating beat type? Or the overtly lyrical and inspirational indie rap? What if there was the best of both of those genres? A perfectly molded and crafted artist who knew when to take themselves seriously and knew when to have a [...]
02 January 2012
I had an easy time blowing off friends who told me the debuy Radiohead album was good because of “Creep,” which I thought was the worst kind of derivative star-grope. It wasn’t until OK Computer that I went back to The Bends and acknowledged that maybe I was a little too hasty / snobby in [...]
01 January 2012
Canada’s Dan Snaith, the artist formerly known as Manitoba before legal proceedings forced the change to the equally somehow perfect Caribou, seems to have a knack for these matters of taste. Sticking with the geographical for the title of his 2007 opus Andorra, a Polaris Prize winner in a field where you know it means [...]
31 December 2011
______________________________________________________________________ Well there goes another year. It seems barely a few months since we were reflecting on the excellence that 2010 generated, but here we are again doing the same for 2011. It is pleasing to be able to say that the high standard of the decade’s opening year did not drop off in the [...]
31 December 2011
Shortly after hearing Maylee Todd’s impressive new single “Hieroglyphics” I realized this is an artist I need to pay more attention to. It wasn’t long before that that I found myself lost in her debut album Choose Your Own Adventure. It’s one of those albums that sets out to prove that there actually isn’t that [...]
30 December 2011
The state of California is home to some of the most diverse neighborhoods in the country. People of all sorts of nationalities and socio-economic backgrounds call this place home, and the art originating from [...]
29 December 2011
Every once in a while I’ll listen to a new release and daydream about the possibilities of showing it to an acclaimed musician in his / her sprouting stardom. How would a 1966 Jimi Hendrix react to Tame Impala? How open would a pre-Pet Sounds Brian Wilson be to Animal Collective? I find my curiosity [...]
28 December 2011
Since I Left You is the lone album from the Australian production outfit The Avalanches and is perhaps one of the most slept-on producer-driven albums from the late ‘90s / early ‘00s. Placing a genre label on this record is damn near impossible considering the wide array of sounds used on here. The album is [...]
27 December 2011
Echoes of Silence completes the 2011 trilogy for Toronto-based act The Weeknd. Started with House of Balloons and Thursday, the R&B outfit set their path in front of them with this passionate, burning brand of music. Headed by recognizable voice and Drake-collaborator, Abel Tesfaye, the booming, low-frequency sound of The Weeknd has remained steady throughout [...]
26 December 2011
I’m not sure if I was starting to burn out on pop-punk because I’d listened to an overabundance of it for years or because it was becoming popular. Sadly, it was likely more of the latter than the former—21 years old in New Hampshire, trying too hard to adhere to some non-existent code (while pretending [...]
