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Album Reviews / Music / Reviews — 19 Comments
13
Jul 09

YACHT – See Mystery Lights, Album Review & Vinyl + CD Giveaway

YACHT See Mystery Lights, Album Review & Vinyl + CD Giveaway album reviews reviews 2 YACHT
See Mystery Lights

DFA
out July 28th

51/100
[Rating Scale]
Buy it at Insound!

[rating:51/100]
I sincerely believe that there came a moment in everybody’s lives early last year when they first heard the Ting Tings’ “Shut Up And Let Me Go”. There we were, listening to the most hotly tipped music this side of Little Boots, smugly nodding along to a pretty decent song. But then… that yelp! “HEY!”. Computers exploded everywhere, speaker systems were quickly turned off, and thousands of hypem.com perusers trotted down to the nearest Doctor’s surgery to have their ear drums checked for signs of permanent damage. I may still have use of my ears, but Yacht’s latest album, “See Mystery Lights”, contains far too many moments like that. Depressingly, these moments scar an album that is, for the most part, an exceptionally impressive artistic statement and further proof of the genius of James Murphy’s DFA. Continue reading →

Album Reviews / MP3 / Music / Reviews — 3 Comments
19
Mar 09

Art Brut – Art Brut vs. Satan Album Review

Art Brut Art Brut vs. Satan Album Review album reviews reviews 2

[rating:40/100]

Art Brut reached the “pinnacle” of their success when their third single, “Emily Kane”, stumbled to #41 in the UK charts. It’s fairly depressing, then, to realise that two albums down the line, not only have Art Brut failed to build upon this success, but they have also refused to progress as a band. The end result? Three albums of fairly pleasant, sporadically hilarious songs that have served to market them as a cult band for those that “get” them. With their newest album  “Art Brut vs Satan”, I was hoping to be astounded. I wanted breathtaking, what I got was power chords, more power chords, the “angular” guitars of 2005 and Eddie Argos’ thoughtful and witty monotone that is entertaining on the finer songs of the album, but quickly becomes tiresome.

Possibly I’m being a bit critical… “Art Brut vs Satan” is by no means a bad album. Continue reading →

Album Reviews / MP3 / Music / Reviews — 12 Comments
10
Mar 09

Bat For Lashes – Two Suns Album Review

Bat For Lashes Two Suns Album Review album reviews reviews 2
[rating:81/100]
Bat For Lashes, aka Natasha Khan, returns on April 6th with her sophomore album, Two Suns, a record of such incredible depth and beauty that it has taken me the best part of a month (just ask Luis if you don’t believe me) to work this out; it’s going to delight and disappoint fans of Fur & Gold in equal measure. Sorry for the anti climax! On the plus side, fans of Natasha’s Mercury Prize Nominated Fur & Gold will feel spoilt for choice with the heartrendingly nihilistic vignettes they’ve come to expect from her. Unfortunately, if fans were expecting a lean towards a more accessible album and for Natasha to get the credit she deserves as an incredible songwriter in album sales, they’ll be bitterly disappointed. Of course, this fact is hard to get upset about juxtaposed next to Natasha proclaiming that “Crying took me to the darkest place/And you have set fire to my heart”. OK, OK; seems like she might have bigger fish to fry than whether vacuous 14 year old girls are going to be bopping around to her songs at their rubbish parties. Her heart’s on fire, for god’s sake! And from the general mood of the album, I get the sense that it’s not in a Cut Copy-ish “Yeah, my heart’s on fire, dude!!!” type of way… Continue reading →

Album Reviews / Listen / MP3 / Music / Reviews — 11 Comments
20
Jan 09

Andrew Bird – Noble Beast Album Review

Andrew Bird Noble Beast Album Review album reviews reviews 2

[rating:46/100]

Is Andrew Bird the future of music? Quite frankly… No. Some may reply to this that quality is more important than “being the next big thing”, and I would agree with them, but the simple fact surrounding “Noble Beast”, due to be released January 20th, is that it is painfully mundane and somewhat reticent; it would seem that Andrew Bird, no doubt an exceptionally skilled musician and multi-instrumentalist, has fallen into a comfortable rut of songwriting that is likely to placate his hard-core fan bases’ need for another album brimming with shimmering folk rock, but unlikely to excite anybody who owns anything by Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes or Bob Dylan. Just about everyone, then… Continue reading →

Album Reviews / MP3 / Music / New Releases / Reviews — 8 Comments
1
Jan 09

Bon Iver “Blood Bank” EP Review

Bon Iver Blood Bank EP Review album reviews reviews 2

[rating:86/100]

It was announced (quite  a while ago, in fact) that Bon Iver was following up “For Emma, Forever Ago” with an EP to be released on January 20th, again on Jagjaguwar. However, this time Bon Iver does not mean Justin Vernon… on “Blood Bank”, two more musicians help to beef up his sound. Did it really need “beefing up”, though..?

Having released one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the year, releasing new material was always going to be tricky for Bon Iver. The well known “sophomore album syndrome” affects a huge number of artists. Justin Vernon is a clever guy though – instead of making people wait for a second album, which will, of course, put a lot of pressure on him to avoid “sophomore album syndrome” , he is releasing a four song EP that is surely designed to get people used to Bon Iver being a band, not just one man sitting on a log with a reverb pedal.

If you haven’t heard it already, you will probably be fairly apprehensive as to how this sound has come out, as I was. The perfect cure for this natural apprehension is to listen to “Blood Bank” a few times (the song, not the whole EP, although that would probably help  as well) and realize that Bon Iver has, actually, got better.

Continue reading →

Feature — 12 Comments
30
Nov 08

Paste Magazine’s Top 50 Albums 2008: Pros, Cons and OMGWTFS?!

Paste Magazines Top 50 Albums 2008: Pros, Cons and OMGWTFS?! feature       

 

End of year lists are pretty important to me. I’m not going to get all sentimental, emotional, and break down in tears (OK, maybe just a little sentimental) or even waffle on for too long about myself, but I do think that this is relevant concerning just why end of year lists are so important in an increasingly disposable music industry that has started to merely linger over new releases, before moving on and looking for the next big thing. I spent the entire of 2007 a blissfully ignorant 15 year old, reading NME and talking about how groundbreaking the Pigeon Detectives were with my “cooler” friends. In the Christmas break, I stumbled across hypem.com and discovered hundreds of people talking about what had been the best album of 2007. I expected names like Radiohead, Arcade Fire and Arctic Monkeys. What surprised me were bands like The National, Panda Bear, Band of Horses and Justice. Why hadn’t NME been talking about these people? And so I discovered a whole year’s worth of great music in a couple of weeks, and cancelled my NME subscription.
This, I have come to feel, is the purpose of end of year lists. They may serve as a grand effigy of self applauding wankery to the more pretentious blogger, but end of year lists are the best way to introduce new music to people. Sure, you can spend 364 days of the year telling everyone why Cut Copy are the bottom line of music in 2008, but until you put your money where your mouth is (so to speak) and place them above everybody else in your end of year list, permanently chronicling your opinion for all of posterity to judge and deride, people will find it regrettably easy to overlook them.
And so it was with the unmistakable twinge of déja vu that I opened up Paste Magazine’s “Signs of Life 2008:Best Music“. The process had started again, a year had passed, and somewhere in the world, a young me or you logged on to Paste Magazine’s website and stopped listening to Scouting for Girls… But… just how impressive is Paste Magazine’s list? Continue reading →