Andrew Boe September 28th, 2007
Rating: 8.5
It’s been three years since their last album, Carnival, which was a rhythm section led masterpiece and now New Model Army have just released High, an album that sounds a little more akin to their typical songwriting style, but is no less compelling. The band have been described as being everything from punk to goth to folk, but the truth is that they have always eschewed categorization by just being themselves, a unique rock group led by Justin Sullivan, who continues to write intelligent, passionate music without effort. In this regard, High picks up where Carnival left off and New Model Army remain instantly identifiable and yet constantly evolving with another excellent release.
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Andrew Boe September 24th, 2007
Rating: 8.4
What a pleasant surprise the new Marissa Nadler CD was when it arrived in my mailbox. She is a relatively new artist from rural Massachusetts whom I knew nothing about. Songs III: Bird on the Water is her third record, and it is her first that was professionally recorded. It is a folk album in the true sense of the word and it is great. There are no traces of what most would refer to as alt-country. Refreshingly, there is hardly one shred of country at all in this sophisticated collection of folk songs. The songs themselves are quite bare, with minimal ethereal accompaniment and contain a moderate amount of shimmer and echo. The songs are somber and haunting, and if I were to come up with a quick comparison, I would say that she sounds something like a modern day female Leonard Cohen, but she also grasps her own autonomous voice.
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Logan Vessey September 20th, 2007
Rating: 8.2
“I think that’s the scrappiest version I’ve ever done of that in my life.”
That’s the line 21-year old Jamie Treays (aka Jamie T) uses to describe the album version of “Brand New Bass Guitar” to lead off his debut album, Panic Prevention, and I’d say that “scrappy” is an apt description of the album as a whole. He’s been compared to a number of seminal British musicians, from Joe Strummer to Mike Skinner, and those two influences in particular are apparent all over this album. He’s already been critically and commercially well-received over in the motherland, and is making moves in the States with his interesting blend of hip-hop (”So Lonely Was The Ballad”), spaz-dance-punk (”Operation”) and even a little scatting (”If You Got The Money”). The album flows seamlessly with vocal interludes all throughout and a very consistent tone, which might be what makes it so refreshing.
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Matthew Wendus September 18th, 2007
Rating: 8.7
Andorra, the latest release from Ontario-based digital maestro Daniel Snaith, is about as good of an indie electronica release you’re likely to hear all year. Snaith has been playing under the name of Caribou since 2004 after the threat of a lawsuit from punk rocker Dick Manitoba forced him to change his previous title of the same name. Whatever Canada-inspired moniker he chooses to adopt, what hasn’t changed is his ability to direct his own sonic landscapes into a diamond-honed product. Still in his late-20s, Snaith has demonstrated a powerful presence as a producer and digital musician. The music of Andorra ranks as not only some of his most intricate work, but also that which finds itself in good standing to make top-10 lists for 2007.
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Andrew Boe September 17th, 2007
Rating: 7.0
It is a bit challenging to introduce Akron/Family to those who may not be familiar with them. The group consists of four young men who mainly write a strange blend of folk-rock that most people will instantly lump into this trendy new category termed ‘freak folk.’ They are not from Akron, OH, and as far as one can tell, they have nothing to do with the town. Instead, they hail from various small towns in the US and have settled in New York City. Their new CD and 2xLP is their third full length album entitled Love is Simple, and it is a continuation of what we have seen and heard from the group on their previous releases.
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Andrew Boe September 10th, 2007
Seattle, WA - September 3, 2007
After spending the better part of at least a decade controlling Sputnik satellites from his remote position somewhere at zero gravity, Roky Erickson, of Thirteenth Floor Elevators fame, has decided to come back down to planet Earth in order to sing his wonderful songs about vampires, serial killers, ghosts, mythological beasts and other assorted creatures. In 2005, Erickson started performing again after disappearing from the public eye for many years. You had better be grateful for that because without his presence, rock music today would be missing an awful lot of character. Roky and his current group, the Explosives, performed for the first time ever in Seattle at the Bumbershoot festival, and they were incredibly competent, engaging, and touching at the same time.
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Andrew Boe September 6th, 2007
August 28, 2007
On a blazing Indian summer evening in downtown Portland where the second floor of the Crystal Ballroom became soggy with humidity and stagnant air, I had the privilege to witness the legendary Bert Jansch in concert. From the opening notes of “It Don’t Bother Me,” the title track from his second LP in 1965, it was like observing someone who invented the fucking guitar as his fingers were so agile that it made me never want to pick up the instrument again. His unique way of playing has almost single-handedly modernized the way that acoustic based music is played. The other thing about Jansch that makes him so amazing and untouchable is that he does not confine himself to merely be a member of one genre like so many artists do, rather he takes his folk, blues and rock influences and adds just as much of his own autonomous style to create an amalgam of music that is both highly varied and also instantly recognizable.
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Matthew Wendus September 4th, 2007
Rating: 7.9
Luke Temple succeeds where most modern folk rockers go astray. He concentrates on formulating visual music rife with vivid imagery instead of wearing his heart on his sleeve through acoustic slush. This is the reason why so many folk rockers turn out dreck and ultimately join the ranks of achy douches who happen to wield a Dreadnaught instead of a Strat. The strongest asset of Temple’s music is the dizzying gusto that comes out of the keyboards. The twittering organ harmonies skip, skitter, and bop to make Snowbeast less singer-songwriter fare and more along the lines of late ‘60s acid experimentation.
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Andrew Boe August 28th, 2007
Rating: 7.5
While Nick Cave has been recording with a group under the name Grinderman, longtime Bad Seed and fellow Birthday Party cohort, Mick Harvey, has just released his fourth album (not including soundtracks). For this recording, Harvey has employed the Bad Seeds’ Thomas Wydler and James Johnston to assist him with another amalgam of cover songs and a few original tunes. His first two solo records contained reinterpretations of Serge Gainsbourg songs that were translated to English while his last album, One Man’s Treasure, followed the same formula of the new disc, Two of Diamonds.
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Shrie Bradford August 27th, 2007
Rating: 5.4
Soft rock has its place. It’s good in old folks homes, in the moving/inspirational/epiphanic moments of romantic comedies… but soft rock doesn’t fit in as the bastard child of one surprisingly good band, Luxe, a somewhat unknown early collaboration between Torquil Campbell, Chris Dumont and James Shaw (of Metric), and Campbell’s newest involvement, Stars. Memphis formed during Dumont’s vacation in Campbell’s hometown of Vancouver, B.C. They got together, spilled their creative juices (eek) and Memphis was born.
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