Beyond

8.9/10

As one of the lesser known yet no less beloved of the bands that were a part of the brewing alternative music scene in Boston in the late eighties Dinosaur Jr was always lacadaisically fantastic. J Mascis' thin voice, guitar virtuosity despite his unkempt slacker appearance the insouciant nature of the songs counterbalancing the tight compelling quality that made them worth listening to. Ultimately, Mascis, Barlow and Murph have pulled off a feat, they've reunited and actually recorded an album something that Boston contemporaries the Pixies have been promising since they played to incredibly strong crowds in 2005. The even bigger achievement is the fact that this album manages to recall all of the things that made Dinosaur Jr great without seeming like a tired rehash of the old stuff or like a sagging greatest misses collection.



The beauty of Beyond is that it ties together all of the sucesses and failures of previous albums and the benefits of the band being split for nearly twenty years. The guys have done a lot of growing up, and this is indicated best by the inclusion of two of Lou Barlow's songs, the tension between Mascis and Barlow is still there, but it makes for excellent music "Back To Your Heart" one of the tracks written by Barlow is possibly the best song on the album with its incessant wall of guitar fuzz and deliberate lyrical delivery. For Mascis' part there are some incredible highlight moments; "Pick Me Up" has one of the best guitar solos in recent memory, and since over half of the song is guitar solo it should be. This album collates the best parts of late eighties early nineties indie, the incidentally talented musicians who managed to make brilliant music despite their utter lack of ambition. This is a beautifully refreshing touch in a market that is too glutted with bands trying desperately to sound just like their forebears and still make a classic album, Beyond is classic because it has the inherent individuality and effortless cool that so many modern bands have to fight to capture.

Favourite Worst Nightmare

6.5/10

Four snotty British kids forming a band and making a big splash in the U.S. isn't the most plausible of plots, but somehow the Arctic Monkeys managed to pull it off with 2006's Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not. The band managed to make snarky lyrical asides and dancy, wiry guitars cool again, fifteen minutes after Franz Ferdinand had pulled off the same feat.



The catch here is that Whatever People Say I Am... was a big breakout success and it came out of nowhere, so the band is facing expectations so high that they're almost sacreligious going into their second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare. Now the only question to really be answered here is "Does the record deliver?" the answer may be slightly surprising to some people and it is...yes and no.

The album starts off with the aptly titled "Brianstorm" which aside from being a rather deceptive title (try looking at it in iTunes for a half hour straight trying to figure out whether it's supposed to be spelled that way or not) is a really good track and hints at some development. No discernible chorus, different instrumental touches, this could be their turning point. The very next track "Teddy Picker" however brings back the same old new-rave sound of Whatever People Say I Am... this isn't necessarily a bad thing but it just seems the way it did listening to Room On Fire you're left wondering what direction this thing is really going to go, and Jesus Christ, it's only two songs in!

Ultimately, the album delivers on the same punchy delivery and even ups the ante in those terms, these boys had a new bassist to break in since the departure of Andy Nicholson, and Nick O'Malley does a fine job filling in, but this album has a rougher more punk approach and the instruments are thrashed to ribbons on most of the songs represented here except for a few. "Fluorescent Adolescent" is brilliantly wistful with lines like "discarded all your naughty nights for niceness/landed in a very common crisis" followed up with "nothing seems as pretty as the past though". "The Only Ones Who Know" calls lovers on foreign soil to mind and sounds sweet but tastes bitter with the addition of the lyrics. "Do Me A Favour" is driving and interesting with one of the best lines in memory "How to tear apart the ties that bind/perhaps fuck off might be too kind". Of course for all of this good there is the bad, "Old Yellow Bricks" feels like nothing more than the usual dance floor filler and features the strangest guitar line in history, in the last seventeen seconds of the song, I defy any listener to not think of Knight Rider.

Overall Favourite Worst Nightmare is an adequate follow-up even if its approach is somewhat inconsistent in comparison with the carpet bomb that was Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

Rocket Propelled Genius...

Just when you suppose you've seen and heard it all, you have a family member bring back reports from an anime convention, mind you an anime convention where none other than Dana Snyder the voice of the infamous Masta Shake of Aqua Teen Hunger Force was a guest, along with George Lowe of Space Ghost fame as well as a group of hilarious music makers known as Rocket Propelled Geeks.

These guys make some very literate "nerdcore" hip-hop, the best example has to be the play on urban braggadocio that is Crimson Twins a track about the two millionaire villain twins from the GI Joe TV series. These guys don't play off the novelty as much as you'd expect as the rhymes flow quickly beside lithe beats and melodies that you could swear were recorded off of the TV set during a game of Zelda (The Hyrule Connection). These guys sound like a geekier Cool and the Gang and as much as that may seem offputting, this is genuinely good music for people who are able to laugh at loving video games, Star Trek and D&D.

Click here to purchase the Rocket Propelled Geeks album GOTO 10.

Goodbye Mr. Rosewater

In memory of a great American Author.



“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”

Kurt Vonnegut
November 11, 1922 - April 11, 2007

Cassadaga

7.5/10

I'm Wide Awake It's Morning was a great protest album. It's been looked at now from every angle by plenty of people, but ultimately Conor Oberst constructed a great record about anti-bush and anti-war sentiment that was reminiscent (excuse the reference) of Dylan's best work. The album soared and swooned in rambling country fashion and made its statements concisely and with a more shrewd sense of lyricism that Oberst's previous albums. Digital Ash In A Digital Urn was something different altogether but personally was the more brilliant of the two albums. The electronic quirks of Digital Ash... were suited well to his equally quirky voice and lyrics, the concept of stretching out across two albums however seemed to have hurt the effort.

Cassadaga does its best to draw all of these disparate influences and the component parts of Conor Oberst into one cohesive album and play as something bigger than the sum of its parts. Ultimately, it does an all right job of that and the songs are excellent, but whether or not its really complete as an album in terms of theme or tone is up for debate. The lyrical content is all over the usual angst ridden map of usual concerns, religion, war, and the supernatural. The references to Cassadaga, the snippets of phone conversation incorporated into "Clairaudients (Kill or Be Killed)" and the interviews done prior to the release of this album about Oberst's apparent visits to mediums and mystics have provided a sort of explanation of his almost constant anguish across his musical career. He remains an almost constantly naive character relying on a community of psychics to point him in the right direction, he is something of a caricature of himself in a way that even the parodies of him on Saturday Night Live and The Onion are lacking. This becomes blatantly obvious in his music through his adroit yet obscure lyricism and his outlandish instrumentations. Regardless of all this the songs collected on this record are second to none and even outdo his own previous work.

"Four Winds" is a joyous country shuffle that calls religious imagery into view with every line, "Make A Plan To Love Me" is full on Burt Bacharach material, and sounds classy and new while recalling the past all at once. "Coat Check Dream Song" brings to mind the Cure and best materializes the influences and sounds of Digital Ash... while also incorporating an arabic vocal that sort of seems oddly compelling yet overall in the right place. Cassadaga may not be Bright Eyes' best album but it is a very good one.

Another Surprising Solo Album

7.5/10

Underoath are known for their extreme christian tinged hardcore, and mainly known as "the band with the drummer that sings". Now that drummer that sings has decided to step into the limelight a bit more, and front his own side project with the album Southern Weather. This album is very similar to the Foo's first outing in that like Grohl, Aaron Gillespie (the aforementioned singing drummer) records every instrument in the studio and sings almost every lyric, with a few notable guest appearances on vocals that prove quite outstanding.

To begin with the first single "Say This Sooner" is a driving percussive slice of pop-rock heaven and it comes out as anthemic as intended while being easily more compelling than most of Gillespie's contemporaries. "Dirty and Left Out" is a quieter more mellow affair with a strummed country tinged guitar and aid from emo godhead Jeremy Enigk the track is the only one of the bunch to not take a turn toward the anthemic and stays subtle for the most part until Gillespie evokes Jesus and sings the line master, savior, Jesus, it's enough to make someone who is not a fan of christian music cringe, but given the fact that Gillespie never does anything without a reason and never does something to simply pander, one can hardly blame him for simply singing earnestly, and it also begs the listener to keep an open mind. "I Mostly Copy Other People" features the other big guest appearance, Kenny Vasoli from The Starting Line lends bass and vocals to this track and it is by far the best song on the album. The album can sometimes wear due to a lack of variation, and it borrows heavily from a consistent formula of heart-on-sleeve emo and thus can be an album that demands you be in the correct mindest.

Southern Weather is an album of hooky guitars, driving percussive drums and plenty of sing-along choruses, you'll want to pump your fist in the air with all of these songs, and especially with the angelic choir and operatic rock of "Amazing, Because It Is" even with the more overt religious imagery on this album none of it fails to detract from the tight songwriting and solid performances Gillespie gives throughout.

Kings of Leon - Because of The Times

9/10

A song like "Knocked Up" feels almost like a well written novella. The drums convey the feeling of a train moving steadily through a Florida thunderstorm at night while the lead guitar and the bass lay down the rain over the tracks ahead, then Nathan Followill executes a quick roll on the toms and thunder is cracking the sky overhead. Caleb mumbles in his hillbilly drawl "I don't care what nobody says we're gonna have a baby" and all I can see is a young man with a huge weight on his heart and a pretty young thing next to him rambling away from trouble the best they can.



This image seems very cliche and all so very "It's been done..." but that in and of itself is part of what makes the Kings of Leon a great band, especially on Because of The Times. This album is the third album from the Kings and thus is subject to the same intrinsic sense of fear that haunted the Strokes last album. The fact is that both of these bands had two excellent 1st and 2nd albums and awoke from their retro comas only to realize that musicians around them were making music with better production values and cleaner sounds. Whereas with the Strokes this effect sanitized the music and made it almost loveless the Kings manage to do the exact opposite trick. This record feels like the Pixies meet the Allman Brothers and they manage to keep the best elements of both while leaving behind the pitfalls that snared their contemporaries.

Ironically in this case the single from the album is hardly the best song. "On Call" has a certain charm after the first two or three listens, but so many of these songs are unexpectedly brilliant. "Charmer" for instance is a direct analog to any Pixies tune the bass line has Kim Deal written all over it and Caleb and Matthew do their best Joey Santiago impressions while Caleb embodies Black Francis' squealing howl. Imagining these boys playing this kind of material is frightening but they pull it off with absolute verve. The best part is the fact that every song seems bigger, more expansive and much more interesting, My Party has a fuzzed out bass line that would be perfect in your local indie dance club, and Black Thumbnail plays like they best Rolling Stones song you've never heard. Even when the album veers off into strange territory it still sounds fresh and innovative and doesn't seem to be reaching very far for inspiration. This album does what its predecessors couldn't, it keeps your itchy trigger finger away from the skip buttons and forces you to listen with rapt attention while inducing toe-tapping and spontaneous air-drumming.



The fact that this all seems to come so naturally to these guys is the really fascinating thing and makes me wonder what could be next. The one and only disappointment in this case is that these formerly hirsute boys are still maintaing their clean shaven faces, I mean these guys had the best facial hair in the biz and it is conspicuously missing, unlike Metallica however cutting their hair has not ruined the music.