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.

Modest Marr! We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank

8.5/10

Of course the big story of this very young decade is the union of Modest Mouse and Johnny Marr. The fact that this has created such a dust-up in the indie scene is no surprise, after all this event is tantamount to Keith Richards leaving the Rolling Stones and hobbling off on tour with the Strokes, a moment that is at once satisfyingly surreal and unsettling.



The surprise in this event is the music that comes out of this particular collaboration. Modest Mouse is a strange band, and the lineup has gone through many changes with the only static members being Isaac Brock, Jeremiah Green and Eric Judy but the music has always spoken for itself, but with the huge breakthrough that was Good News For People Who Love Bad News the albums went from sparse lo-fi indie excursions into Brock's heavy headed consciousness to glossily produced frenetic optimism. The beauty of the novelty hit "Float On" will be difficult to recapture which is something that Epic is surely counting on; but this album has so many gems it's almost impossible to care if anyone but the diehards notice.

The album starts with a song staying close to the nautical theme of the title "March Into the Sea", one of the first songs I've heard that enticed me to bang my head to accordion licks. "Dashboard" is the obvious reach toward "Float On" success but this song does not fall flat in the same way that you would expect it too. The tune swoons in and out of a disco beat carrying the anthemic chorus along verses like the dashboard melted/but we still had the radio and the windshield was broken/but I love the fresh air you know. "We've Got Everything" kicks up more of that same radio friendly gold dust and keeps its indie cred very much intact, James Mercer's back up vocals are distinctly noticable among the ruckus but are brilliantly appropriate and add a much needed sweetness behind Brock's growling yelp.



"Little Motel" is the best example of Johnny Marr's influence on the band's new music, anyone who has ever heard the guitar line to the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now?" can recognize the person behind the ax on this album. Marr brings his atmospheric skill to Modest Mouse's already very agile music and makes it more sinewy and more languid. "Invisible" and "People as Places as People" are also perfect examples.

Ever since 2004 Modest Mouse has been standing on the brink of either pandering to the masses or making music that remained true to the spirit of their indie roots and I have to say that this album is the proof that Brock & Co. will continually remain the spit-fire curmudgeons they always have been.

Bright Eyes Channel Neil Young

Conor Oberst has drawn a lot of comparisons to musical acolytes like Bob Dylan in his young years, but the proof has always been in the melodies and the lyrics. Oberst has a talent for writing earthy stories of youthful exasperation in a New York by way of the midwest fashion.



2005 saw Bright Eyes making a big splash with the release of two studio albums, both of which were well accepted, though most looked at the dewy eyed folk of I'm Wide Awake It's Morning as the superior record. Now though Oberst and Co. have released a collection of B-Sides as a bit of a taster for the upcoming album Cassadaga and I have to say that in many years I've not been so impressed or excited. The EP entitled Four Winds opens on the titular track and brings in tons of biblical imagery along with the same impassioned vocal delivery that Oberst excels at as his voice still quavers around the syllables of every word, this time around though the parallels aren't so much Bob Dylan as they are Neil Young. The harmonies are beautiful and the music is striking with the strains of violins and touches of folksy guitar and banjo. Stray Dog Freedom keeps the feeling of Weld era Neil Young with a dazzling lead guitar line, and a dreamy feeling that offsets the heavier use of electric guitar extremely well. This EP is worth getting for the fact that it shows that even on B-Sides this band is more talented than a vast majority of its contemporaries.

Some of the fun of Four Winds is spotting the guest appearances like Ben Kweller, and M. Ward, and the video for the eponymous track is brilliant for the fact that it showcases a more confident and capable musician in Conor Oberst. He no longer looks scared to be in front of an audience and carries a swagger that you'd swear he stole from Johnny Cash. The fact is that I can't wait for Cassadaga, and in the impossible event that it's a flop then this EP can still keep me satisfied.

Broadcasting... Loudly...

4/10

Big guitars, harsh screamed/shouted vocals, a gang of people singing call and response choruses, these are the defining characteristics of Broadcasting... Comeback Kids newest effort. A band is usually known for one very specific thing or another, and this isn't all that bad, but the problem is when the characteristics serve to create caricature.



To begin with Comeback Kid is approaching their third long player at something of a deficit having lost vocalist Scott Wade, Andrew Neufeld steps in for him almost seemlessly with a few disctinct differences. Neufeld makes the songs sound tougher and has a more intense howl than Wade did, but at times Neufeld's voice calls to mind Deryck Whibley. The departure of a vocalist usually means the end of a band, but in this case Comeback Kid soldiers on and carries the effort to a nearly flawless execution of predictable and unwavering conformity to a formula.


The album contains some very interesting songs, Defeated is one of the best metalcore songs in a good two years, but the album quickly takes off in the same vein the rest of the way through. The unfortunate thing about this record is that the riff that opens up the frey is a great example in barely restrained ferocity and it carries a frenetic pace up until the drums start to pound in and the song takes off, and I hoped that the rest of the album would push their strengths over the top, but unfortunately the approach becomes so repetitive that the same drum beat and screaming begin to wear on the nerves. The only thing to be said in this case is that this record would have heavily benefitted from a variation in form.

A Weekend In The City

6.9/10

Universality is a neat trick, and often is one that most can not conjure very well. Bloc Party starts off their sophomore effort A Weekend In The City with the line “Like the 80’s never happened”, if this is to be taken as the operating principle the band uses to make music, then it’s charmingly effective. The interesting thing about this album is that it plays with a dichotomy that is inherent to youth and inhabits Kele Okereke the band’s front-man.

The preceding line really plays that dichotomy well, because if the 80’s had never happened, it’s hard to think that this band would exist; however, imagining a world in which that decade was lost the band still sounds immediate, this is where the rub is. These songs are the commentary of a young man in a metropolitan setting experiencing the swirl of boredom, drugs, sex and longing. Okereke is a stunning lyricist and distills complex emotion quite well into affecting poetry, Waiting For The 7.18 the document of wistful longing for the “old days” is a tremendous example where he sings the lines “Just give me moments / not hours or days” a testament to the ennui that blanches all youth and counter-balances this with the lines “If I could do it again / I’d make more mistakes / I’d not be so scared of falling / If I could do it again / I’d climb more trees/ I’d pick and eat more wild blackberries” The song captures the lost and yearning young professional in a job that they hate extremely well. This album doesn’t stay confined within a formula, though it covers the gamut of being young in London well, The Prayer which portrays dancing in a club in a sort of half trance, Uniform a song that calls the culture of youth to task. The album cuts all of this with songs about institutional racism and religious hypocrisy Where Is Home? And homosexuality and meaningless sex Kreuzberg and I Still Remember. The only problem with this album is that the lyrics have such intense emotional impact that the music suffers from a lack of variation.

The instrumentation is not bad per se, but many of the songs maintain a very similar feel, almost too similar. The Prayer has a tribal feeling to it which carries it over intensely, and Hunting For Witches is excellent in its depiction of war on terror paranoia, but the “Bloc Party by numbers” feeling is stitched throughout this album and that unfortunately hooks the listener’s ear because of Silent Alarm’s high expectations.

Infinity (& Insincerity) On High

6.5/10

“I’m all right in bed, but I’m better with a pen”, Pete Wentz has never been one to shy away from self-aggrandizement, which is a bit welcome in his field. Being an emo poster boy is tough; all of the spiky insecurities and floppy hair, for these guys love really is a battlefield. The problem with Infinity on High and Fall Out Boy in general is that there’s always been just a bit too much caustic wit and confidence mixed with a sort of trademark sarcasm that has been all too lacking from popular music, basically they don’t fit the emo/punk mold. Patrick Stump sings a bit too well and doesn’t whine into the microphone, the music doesn’t seem as amateurish and uncouth and though the lyrics might bemoan teenage broken hearts and angst, the next line almost always leads to a snotty kick in the ass come-back that feels like it should have been used in your last nasty break-up.



About 10 seconds into the song “Thriller” you’re bound to think to yourself, “is that who I think it is?” and the answer is yes, Jay-Z is giving the boys in the band a big up intro in the form of a thank you to their loyal fans that have stuck around since the beginning as well as giving the critics a once over for what they said would “never happen”, frankly this all sounds a little silly until the guitars open up with a fairly metal influenced salvo that gets the album moving quickly, and the song progresses as a success story of the bands rise to super-star status. “Thriller” sounds like a conventional Fall Out Boy song but moves into “The Take Over, The Break’s Over” which sounds like it could and would have been written by Franz Ferdinand before moving exuberantly into a giant chorus and then back into the wiry new-wave. The desire to be “taken seriously” runs rampant through out this album but it becomes difficult to definitively say that it hurts or helps it. The presence of a piano ballad seems forced but it doesn’t play badly with the production and Stump’s voice makes it work because he isn’t plaintively crying at the microphone. Moreover the first single “This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race” is just plain weird, it’s quite literally an R&B punk song and it seems like it’s going to fall flat up until it gets to the refrain that assuages a bit of the worry of how the band is straying a bit too far from the formula, but of course a formula was never the band’s friend to begin with.

The album has a sort of oscillating feel to it, alternating between the songs that you know will become fan favorites and the ones that will probably appeal to the people who don’t usually listen to four guys who wear girl jeans. The odd thing about it is that it’s close to losing its spark at quite a few moments and consequently a lot of these songs may be skipped over in subsequent listens, but taken together it’s ambitious and still sounds like the Fall Out Boy you fell in love with on your last car ride with your friends.



I tried to promise myself I wouldn’t include a list of my favorite tracks from this album after the main review but I’ll make a confession that I really like Fall Out Boy and I kind of wish I could have rated this album higher, but it just didn’t meet up with what I had in mind, so I thought I’d give what I thought was the ideal track listing.


1. Thriller
2. The Take Over, The Break’s Over
3. I’m Like A Lawyer With The Way I’m Always Trying To Get You Off (You & Me)
4. Hum Hallelujah
5. Don’t You Know Who I Think I Am
6. The Carpal Tunnel Of Love
7. Bang The Doldrums
8. Fame < Infamy
9. I’ve Got All This Ringing In My Ears And None On My Fingers

The Shins - Wincing the Night Away

8/10

In terms of bands that defy explanation and classification the Shins are a band that play a wistful brand of pop music intermingled with left-field experimentation that allows them to hold on to their self-aware indie credentials at the same time. However they are now the formerly small band that now has a much larger audience due in large part to what seemed an incidental PR engine that advertised them to everyone from children to romantically challenged twenty-something fans of the film Garden State.



One has to think that the ramifications of that kind of notoriety would weigh on an artist and had to have figured into the making of Wincing the Night Away, but in this instance unlike so many others the effects feel less explicit than implicit. On Wincing the Night Away the Shins come across not making the timorous follow-up to a genre landmark like Chutes Too Narrow but rather meeting the expectations with the same wide-eyed panache that they have always possessed. This isn't all that surprising, the Shins have always sounded sonically gifted, if a bit odd, what is surprsing is the way that songwriter James Mercer has handled this album. The songs bound between advances in the bands sound and returns to the touchstones they've created. The lead track Sleeping Lessons begins with a vibraphone and Mercer's distorted vocals, it is immediately the most forward looking and most self referential track all at once, as the song builds into an exuberant jaunt that recalls the Shins of records past. The band pulls this trick again and again avoiding jumping the shark by consistently calling to mind their own familiar style but never retreating into it, while exploring new ground and pushing the boundaries around them. While the music is by far some of their best, the lyrics find Mercer using more and more oblique poetry to communicate, the most notable instance of this is on the song Red Rabbits where he sings "Into the crucible to be rendered an emulsion". It's difficult to interpret such a complex artifice of wordplay especially when it's placed in the context it is. This is not necessarily the case across all of the album as Australia has some of the more memorable lyrics in recent memory, "Faced with the dodo's conundrum / I felt like I could just fly / but nothing happened everytime I tried." In perspective, the lyrics seem forced in some sections but taken together with the genuinely memorable moments rarely hurt the atmosphere or the arrangements significantly. Given that the Shins appear to have recorded three excellent albums in a row, which is quite difficult for any band to do, I don't believe this band will be facing the aforementioned conundrum anytime soon.

Strokes Guitarist Goes Solo

7/10
It’s the oldest trick in the book. Unassuming and spectacularly afro’d guitarist for a well known band with a diehard fan base goes off and works on his own project and makes his famous songwriter dad very pleased. Omar Rodriguez Lopez did it, minus the famous songwriter father. I am an admittedly big fan of the Strokes, I own all of the albums, yet I was also greatly disappointed by the latest release. I felt that there was a large gap in that album that needed to be filled in. Enter Yours To Keep. Albert Hammond Jr. constructs an entire album of sunny-side up pop tunes that help to make up for what the Strokes have seemed to lack of late.

The opening song “Cartoon Music for Superheroes” is an exercise in beach boys harmony and toy instruments while the guitars on “In Transit” recall “Automatic Stop” from Room on Fire. The songs contain a sort of nervous electricity and ennui that haunts the happy hollow edges of the melodies, but ultimately nothing ever becomes top heavy or too dark. The melodies take a strong precedence over anything else. The major surprise of this album by far is Albert’s voice. Coming in to this album my expectations were almost nill, quite honestly I wouldn’t have been surprised by an entirely instrumental album, but the voice that he finds on this record is warm and tender and plays across the notes well alongside the toy pianos, acoustic guitars and banjos which is the biggest advance. Albert maintains a much more expansive sonic palette than his mates and even trots out a horn section for the closing number on the record. This is a great album while not necessarily daring but with songs this likeable it doesn’t really matter if you think you’ve heard it before, that just means you already know you’ll like it.

New Year, New Best Of!

With a new year comes a lot of new opportunities, and this one I think will be a bit of fun. I’m starting this blog with the (semi) professional critic in mind. The parenthetical addition around the prefix semi is meant to refer to those who aren’t paid to be critics but are regardless. I had wanted to start a music focused website for some time now and decided that not only was now the time for this but that I would start it all off with a list of the albums that I found interesting and worthwhile this year. I won’t burden you with a long list, it’s only five items, and frankly that’s all I had time for this year anyway, but with no further ado, here’s the list.

Underoath - Define The Great Line:

This album is possibly the best thing that happened to Christianity in a couple hundred years. I am not a religious individual myself but I think that these guys capture the conflict between idealism and the truth of being human. This is heavy music that appeals to the faithful and the super-pierced warped tour crowd all at once. The band chug and swoon behind Spencer Chamberlain as his impressive caterwaul bounces between a high end wail and a low primal growl. This album is powerful and meaningful. Very highly recommended.

Copeland - Eat, Sleep, Repeat:

When a band sneaks up on you out of nowhere, especially when so many other bands were falling short of their own very high expectations it's a very satisfying experience. Copeland make something akin to a blend of Radiohead and Elliott Smith. Aaron Marsh has a voice that coos and keens in equal measure, but the joy of this band is in the quiet confidence it radiates. The song "Control Freak" especially is a demonstration in the hooky chops that you can expect in almost all of the songs on the album, though they're sometimes buried by wacky experimentation, this is never to the detriment of the album however, and the record comes out a cohesive and sublime whole.

the Roots - Game Theory:

the Roots are the most important presence in hip-hop, and I don't care who knows it. Kanye's too arrogant, but honestly if Common had released a new album this year I might have had a difficult time deciding which was better. The point is this album is excellent. The music combines the nervy study in musicianship that ?uestlove and company have mastered by this point, and Black Thought observes and destroys with rhymes about war, politics, and personal demons all in the same album. Few artists in any genre are even willing to cover that kind of a gamut and most of them shouldn't as the results are usually less than stellar, but these guys pull it off with polish and punch.

Taking Back Sunday - Louder Now:

The TBS emo die-hards won't like this but Where You Want To Be was a great album. It was the album that Tell All Your Friends wanted to be. I loved Tell All Your Friends don't get me wrong, but having come to this band nearly backwards, I heard Tell All Your Friends after Where You Want to Be, and the improvements were immense. That being said, Louder Now takes the progression further and makes TBS a commercially viable band that still maintains its own personality and allure. My Chemical Romance did a very similar thing a few years ago but were still the most annoying band in music with the make-up and songs that were trying desperately to find any identity they could. Taking Back Sunday now fully benefits from Fred Mascherino and his ability to craft powerful songs and complement Adam Lazarra's pained wail with the assured clear-headed voice needed to keep the lyrics interesting. This album would have had higher position if I hadn't felt the album was hurt by song selection. The B-sides Brooklyn and Sleep were good enough to not only be on this album but to take the place of a couple of cuts.

Sparta - Threes:

This is another band whose first album I thought was not their best work. Wiretap Scars showed potential but never fully capitalized on the promises. Threes is a great album that plays up the melody and molds Jim Wards vocals into a wholly satisfying experience. On the first two albums Ward seemed to be trying too hard and has finally reached a point where he can sing the lovely introspective parts alongside the elaborate emotional anthemic parts. I have to say that the band seems to be benefitting from line-up changes in the form of Keely Davis. The guitar parts are bigger better and the melodies are getting top billing in this outing which is a pleasant surprise since Wiretap Scars seemed to be cribbing At The Drive-In's notes a bit too much.

Well that's that. I hope you all enjoy this hastily produced and rather short best of list. If anybody out there actually reads this, feel free to suggest albums you think I missed, or even criticize the ones that I listed.

"Still Living in the one coastal Florida city that has more sharks on the land than in the water."