It does seem like there’s a rash of foul-mouthed British pop singers storming our shores lately. Well, ok, two. That’s not quite a storm. But Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse have kicked up enough press in the wakes of their respective US releases of proven overseas hits to make it seem like one.

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I’ve never really understood the psyche rock tag when applied to Of Montreal. Kevin Barnes is such a succinct songwriter. His arrangements are meticulously composed and arranged, and he incorporates so many styles in his complicated pop tunes that downgrading any of it to psyche rock would be an injustice that’s not only inaccurate but […]

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I wouldn’t envy the task of following-up the accolades bestowed upon an album like Funeral. It was one of those fluke cultural bubbles, wherein a band rides a wave of impenetrable hype that escalates its record sales from 0 to pop-culture-reference-point in a matter of a few heavy-handed reviews. The trouble is The Arcade Fire […]

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On its Myspace page (which it hasn’t check in over a year), under the “Sounds like” section, Hella’s description reads: “If crack was music, thrown into a blender with fruits. yeah.” And, honestly, that’s not too ridiculous of a way to characterize its frenetic, musically dense, freeform sound. Your first few encounters with Hella are […]

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The Life and Times is slowly turning into the colossal beast it’s always intended to be. On this EP for Japan’s Stiff Slack records, Allen Epley unleashes his heaviest riffs since Shiner’s heyday. But the atmospherics are just as potent, as the band eschews technical bravado in favor of a taut synergy.

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Getting a shitty burned CD in the mail is not a good way to make it to the stereo. But for some reason I put this one in, and I listened to it all the way through. And then I immediately had to go look up everything I could learn about Cortney Tidwell.

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So, there’s a rash of bad follow-ups lately. And, unfortunately, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is one of the victims. On its second full-length, the band manages to subvert all the nuances that made its debut great, while magnifying all the annoying bits. Alec Ounsworth’s voice has always been one unhinged-spastic-horse-neigh away from unlistenable, and […]

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