From the first count off on “Oh Come On”, the Julie Ruin’s Run Fast is a hard-driving masterpiece of the bratty female-fronted punk that Kathleen Hanna pioneered with Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. Her little girl vocals tail off into sighs and escalate into screams, and the guitar of Sara Landeau is heavy enough that the instrumental…
Tag: album reviews
two sentence reviews of reasonably new albums i listened to in august
Dash Hammerstein — Bito Cabrito: sort of slinky ’50s garage pop, lots of keyboards and drawling vocals and weird orchestration. Charming as hell. Great songwriting, loads of earworms, A+ recommendation from Fuel/Friends. Have Gun, Will Travel — Fiction, Fact, or Folktale?: this is the fourth LP from Florida’s Have Gun Will Travel, and it’s just…
album review: the breedings – fayette
I slid the CD version of the Breedings’ Fayette into my car’s CD player a few weeks ago, and like many records in my car, it stayed in the CD player for weeks and weeks, and I listened to it over and over again. Here is a partial list of artists I considered comparing this…
two sentences reviews of reasonably new albums i listened to in july
Two Cow Garage — The Death of the Self-Preservation Society: not out until September, and obviously given my history there will be a big fat wordy full review later, but basically, if you’ve never heard of Two Cow Garage, this record is about to find you your newest favorite band, and there’s not a band out…
two sentence reviews of albums i listened to in june
Boxed Wine — Cheap, Fun: cheerful, complex synth pop with choruses full of hooks and funky ’70s garage rock and hand claps. These guys hooked me when Katie from Speakers in Code found their EP, and their full-length isn’t a letdown. Fuzzy and shiny and distorted summer dance party music. Also, it has a song…
two sentence reviews of albums i listened to in may
Basically I listened to the new National record all month, so I’m behind. Again. Futurebirds — Baba Yaga: more delicious Southern pedal steel flavoured freak out psych-folk from Athens rockers Futurebirds; I occasionally forget how much I enjoy their music, and how soothing and inspiring and visually compelling I find it. Visually compelling seems like…
two sentence reviews of albums i listened to in march and april
I didn’t listen to much new in March; my vacation threw me off my podcast schedule, and I felt like I spent a month just getting that up to speed. But I did listen to a few in March, and way more new music in April. BANG. The Speechless Radio — Care EP: horn-laden, vaguely twee…
album review: frank turner – tape deck heart
Out now. Frank Turner, man. Frank Turner, like Josh Ritter, wrote a break-up album. It can’t not be a breakup album, when it starts off with the upbeat and playful “Recovery”, a song whose sound is disingenuous, or maybe I mean totally true, to its content. It’s about, well, about recovering — from a broken…
album review: hollis brown – ride on the train
oh the south and the sun never felt so good Sometimes it takes me a while to warm up to albums; and sometimes, I fall in love with them literally from the first notes of the first song. The title track from Hollis Brown’s debut LP, “Ride On The Train”, gives exactly the feeling of…
album review: way to blue – the songs of nick drake
I think that everyone who knows Nick Drake’s music has their own relationship to it; the first time they heard it, the people they think of when they hear one of Drake’s delicate, haunting songs on an ad, in a bar, on a television show. For me, an ex-boyfriend introduced me to Pink Moon, and…
brand new kind of photography 