EP Review: Nadine Shah – Dreary Town
The second EP from young, London-based Nadine Shah, Dreary Town, continues to demonstrate the sheer power of Shah’s vocals. Mystical and expressive, mellifluous and melancholic, her voice is tinged with that mysterious near-eastern…
Album Review: David Grubbs – The Plain Where the Palace Stood
Rarely does a title so perfectly evoke the quality of an album’s sound, imagery, and motifs as does the title of the new album from multi-instrumentalist David Grubbs, released this week on the…
Album Review: Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Mosquito
After releasing the blistering Fever to Tell, the tightly crafted Show Your Bones, and the chic, shimmering It’s Blitz!, Yeah Yeah Yeahs are back with their fourth studio album. As a whole, the…
Album Review: Odonis Odonis – Better
Better, the latest EP from Toronto-based lo-fi band Odonis Odonis, is a complex and interesting integration of raging punk-rock and noisy shoegaze-surf wrapped in a steely fold of dark, industrial garage sound. Caked…
Album Review: The Flaming Lips – The Terror (Pop Press Pick)
Growing towards the sunlight from their experimental roots, The Flaming Lips’ career sprouted and flowered on the raw nutrients of joy, silliness, and quirky fun. Songs like “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt….
Album Review: Born Ruffians – Birthmarks
Birthmarks, the third full-length album from Canadian indie group Born Ruffians, takes its title from the matching birthmarks that frontman Luke Lalonde and his girlfriend share. But before you think it’s purely a…
EP Review: Annie Dressner – East Twenties
Annie Dressner is a former NYC resident now living in the UK. Dressner self-released her new EP East Twenties this week, giving the world four more of her straightforward, confessional folk songs. The…
EP Review: Neon Indian – Errata Anex
Intended as a companion EP for Neon Indian’s 2011 album Era Extraña, ERRATA ANEX (meaning ‘compiled errors’) is a collection of five remixed tracks. Neon Indian’s style is a sort of psychedelic eighties…
Album Review: White Fence – Cyclops Reap
Hopefully you really enjoy sixties flower-pop revival. Hopefully you also really enjoy uniquely bizarre, unpredictably textured psychosomatic sound. Otherwise, unless you wish to engage on a thirty-six minute lysergic misadventure that doesn’t first…
Album Review: Kurt Vile – Wakin On A Pretty Daze (Pop Press Pick)
Kurt Vile’s last effort Smoke Ring for my Halo received universal acclaim and was hailed as one of the best albums of the year. His newest album Wakin On A Pretty Daze expands…
Album Review: The Black Angels – Indigo Meadow
The Black Angels were among the first bands to begin popularizing what has become a massive resurgence of the psychedelic genre. Not that they reinvented the genre, which has certainly remained alive since…
Album Review: Frank Smith – Nineties
On their ninth album, Nineties, Austin band Frank Smith delivers some of the tightest, most powerful songs of their long career. Previously firmly rooted in Americana and folk-rock, the band leans in that…
Album Review: The Besnard Lakes – Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO
Montreal indie-rock outfit The Besnard Lakes, fronted by husband and wife duo Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, released their fifth studio album this week on the Jagjaguwar label. Containing only eight songs, half…
Album Review: Tyler, The Creator – Wolf
Even one of my close personal friends who considers himself virtually unoffendable has cringed with distaste upon hearing a few of rising hip-hop star Tyler, The Creator’s sickest rhymes. Tyler lives to push…
Album Review: Vondelpark – Seabed
Listening to Seabed, the first full album from London trio Vondelpark, can feel a lot like reclining in a steamy sauna. There’s no easy way to pinpoint its sound, which tremulously undulates between…
Album Review: Generationals – Heza
Generationals’ new album Heza is built on crisp production and undulating synths. The album possesses a sort of sheen and sparkle that’s captivating and memorable. Though not quite beachy, Heza does contain a…
Album Review: Dutch Uncles – Out of Touch in the Wild
The first thing necessitating mention about five-piece Manchester indie band Dutch Uncles is that they compose their music using multiple time signatures. I am always wary of bands whose publicity seems to revolve…
Album Review: Telekinesis – Dormarion
The third LP from Telekinesis, Dormarion, embraces varying takes on buoyant indie-pop and manages to simultaneously foray into diverse territories of sound while remaining cohesive. Moving between eighties synth, nineties rock, and acoustic…
Album Review: Caveman – Caveman
Brooklyn quintet Caveman’s self-titled sophomore album, out this week on Fat Possum, is what I would classify as “cold rock.” Some refer to it more condescendingly as “Dad rock” because it borrows its…
Album Review: The Cyclist – Bones in Motion
The Irish producer known as The Cyclist has already received a wide variety of accolades for his upcoming LP, Bones in Motion, due to his innovative style of experimental electronica. It’s lo-fi variety…
Album Review: Marnie Stern – Chronicles of Marnia
Blending the organic and near-magical finger tapping style of guitar playing prodigy Marnie Stern has mastered with staccato vocal bursts, Chronicles of Marnia begins sounding almost experimentally synthetic. As stated, it is not….
Album Review: Julian Lynch – Lines
The general consensus amongst those familiar with the longtime work of experimental folk artist Julian Lynch is that his fourth full album Lines is a more focused effort than previous ones. Having not…
Album Review: The Strokes – Comedown Machine
The trouble with releasing a universally lauded debut album is that you’ll forever be measured not only by its greatness but also by its particular qualities. In this way, how “good” either the…
Album Review: Brandt Brauer Frick – Miami
When I read about Berlin group Brandt Brauer Frick’s music, described as “techno with the technology,” I was dutifully intrigued. Optimistically anticipating some sort of new-found instrumental techno magic, I plugged my ears…
Album Review: Carmen Villain – Sleeper
It could be the obvious fact that both are foreign women who have been professional models, but I think the connections between quintessential pop chanteuse Nico and up and coming songstress Carmen Villain…
Album Review: André Obin – The Arsonist
Boston electronica artist André Obin, who has been large on the touring scene for almost five years, opening for acts like M83 and Washed Out, has finally dropped a full-length album this week. His…
The Woolen Men – The Woolen Men
I have to confess sometimes I do not understand the lo-fi movement. For me listening to a song recorded on antiquated equipment is like watching a movie on an old television–it won’t ruin…
Album Review: Phosphorescent – Muchacho (Pop Press Pick)
The sun peeks over the desert horizon with soft yellow blinks and floods a tiny Mexican bar where a disheveled drunk sways, shirttails untucked, shuffling on a concrete floor, mumbling a mournful and…
Album Review: Wild Belle – Isles
Anytime a band appears on the scene and almost simultaneously announces a major label debut, it’s fair that the music-loving public approaches with skepticism. Wild Belle is one such band. The group, whose…
Album Review: The Mary Onettes – Hit the Waves
Toiling on their sound for the last thirteen years, the Swedish dream-pop quartet The Mary Onettes have perfected the art of eighties nostalgia with their latest album Hit the Waves. Its near-forty minutes…
Album Review: The Men – New Moon (Pop Press Pick)
“Won’t you slip on by my side, and drive through the countryside?” Nick Chiericozzi asks in the first line of “Open the Door.” The easy pace and acoustic guitars that open New Moon…
Album Review: Herbcraft – The Astral Body Electric
With monikers like “Herbcraft” and “Astral Body,” you know it’s going to be time to darken the room, light some incense candles and roll out that yoga mat for some deep meditative experiences….
Album Review: Suuns – Images du Futur
On Images Du Futur, Montreal’s Suuns use the umbrella of experimental psych-pop to deliver ten songs that all feel like a different take on the same genre. The tracks explore post-punk, psych-rock, experimental, and dub…
Album Review: The Cave Singers – Naomi
On their fourth studio album (second for label Jagjaguwar), The Cave Singers move in new directions not just from preceding albums but from much of indie music as a whole. The songs that…
Album Review: Bill Baird Spring Break of the Soul
Spring Break of the Soul (Pau Wau Records), a full double LP, is a substantial undertaking by psych-pop artist and Austin-native Bill Baird. Spanning seventeen tracks and clocking in at an hour’s time,…
Album Review: Good Field – Good Field
Good Field’s self-titled debut consists of 11 songs of tight indie-pop that integrates folk, psych, and pop without feeling pigeonholed. God, it feels good to see a band just doing everything well without…
Album Review: Youth Lagoon – Wondrous Bughouse (Pop Press Pick)
This is the feeling of weightlessness. Youth Lagoon possesses some intangible quality that sends the soul soaring, that permeates the chambers of the heart through auditory channels, evoking airy wisps of memories. Indeed,…
Album Review: Helado Negro – Invisible Life
There are ghosts in the stereo, and it won’t be long until they are rattling around inside your skull, carting your mind off to vast grey, Latin-tinged dimensions—at least that’s the case if…
Album Review: Autre Ne Veut – Anxiety (Pop Press Pick)
When I first heard Autre Ne Veut’s single “Play by Play” I was hooked. I listened to it on repeat all week and constantly insisted that friends listen to it. Now that the…
Album Review: Popstrangers – Antipodes
Popstranger’s album title Antipodes comes from a geographical term used to indicate the areas of Australia and New Zealand, and which also denotes the opposite of something. The title is fitting, since noise-fuzz…
Album Review: Mister Lies – Mowgli
Not until halfway through the debut album of twenty-year old bedroom producer Mister Lies did I remember and realize that Mowgli refers to the feral boy-character from The Jungle Book. Given the unique…
Album Review: Lady Lamb the Beekeeper – Ripley Pine
Lady Lamb the Beekeeper is the moniker for songwriter Aly Spaltro, whose debut full-length Ripley Pine inspires me. Essentially, it’s the fulfillment of the American dream: if you work hard and believe in yourself anything…
Album Review: Beach Fossils – Clash the Truth
Ah, the sophomore album—so many expectations riding on the success of your first album. So many voices clamoring about what your sound should be and where it should go. So many inimical hands…
Album Review: Psychic Ills – One Track Mind
One Track Mind is the fourth album by decade-old New York group Psychic Ills, and it continues in the same art-house vein as their previous albums of downtempo psychedelia, grooving across strung-out soundscapes…
Album Review: Iceage – You’re Nothing
Danish punk prodigies Iceage have returned for a sophomore effort, You’re Nothing, on one of indie rock’s most stalwart labels, Matador. With both their debut and second albums, the band seems to find wide…
Album Review: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Push the Sky Away
I must confess that while Nick Cave is someone whose music I’ve been familiar with over the years, I can’t speak with confidence about the quality or merits of any of his latter…
Album Review: Eat Skull – III
There’s something to be expected of a band named ‘Eat Skull,’ and this Portland-based group certainly delivers. While perhaps there’s no thrashing metal or hellish yelling, there’s enough macabre imagery, psychedelic stupors and…
Album Review: Sonny and the Sunset – 100 Records Vol. 3
It’s somewhat difficult to review a record by 13 different bands, as is the case with Sonny Smith’s newest installment of the 100 Records project. To say something overarching about the project as…
Album Review: Jim James – Regions of Light and Sound of God
After a couple of prolific decades and involvement in collaborative projects like Monsters of Folk and the New Multitudes Woody Guthrie album last year, it seemed almost impossible that My Morning Jacket frontman…
Album Review: Crow44 – Crow44
A self-entitled EP, Crow 44 is actually a sampling of songs taken from over twenty-five albums of super-obscure lo-fi bedroom music. Multi-instrumental recording artist James Pants was hunting through cobwebbed corners of the…
Album Review: The Little Ones – The Dawn Sang Along
Los Angeles based pop-sextet The Little Ones claims to love the craft of sixties pop and to draw on music of that era, but their second album The Dawn Sang Along clearly has…
Album Review: Lost Animal – Ex Tropical
Lost Animal is the work of Jarrod Qarrell, an audacious creator of genre blending music whose debut Ex Tropical might be described as synth-punk centered folk-rap. Most of the songs’ rhythmic lyrics are…
Album Review: Dog Bite – Velvet Changes
A former member of Washed Out, Phil Jones has struck out on his own, forming the Atlanta-based band Dog Bite. Jones et al. have a lot going on throughout the 11 songs that…
Album Review: Companion – Companion
After years of a fruitful career releasing albums under her own name on the small but noteworthy Park the Van label, Pepi Ginsberg has formed a band with some friends. The project and…
Album Review: Tom Morgan – Orange Syringe
Singer-songwriter Tom Morgan, whose long-reaching musical history includes writing songs for The Lemonheads, has composed a sympathetic and compelling album here that captures the nature of an aging spirit. Herded by unaffected acoustics…
Album Review: Airstrip – Willing
Birthed from the ashes of Veelee, a lo-fi band that made waves around the local North Carolina Triangle scene, rock quartet Airstrip drops their debut album Willing this week. The project’s creative force,…
Album Review: Feeding People – Island Universe
There’s something about being a teenager that music just captures so perfectly. Even as we grow older and begin to resent that whiny, obnoxious thing we probably once were (“What are you talking…
Album Review: Unknown Mortal Orchestra – II
Unknown Mortal Orchestra has released one of the best albums of the year so far in II, released tomorrow on the stalwart Jagjaguwar label. As someone who enjoys listening to divergent and sometimes…
Album Review: Radar Brothers – Eight
Fans of the Los Angeles indie band Radar Brother will find their eighth studio album (correspondingly entitled Eight) to have a fuller and more diverse sound than previous albums, while yet retaining the…
Album Review: The Ruby Suns – Christopher
The first time I heard the Ruby Suns, I was riding in a friend’s car. The first track sounded good, so I asked who it was. The song ended and the next track…
Album Review: Amor de Días – The House at Sea
As the first gauzy strums of songwriting-duo Amor de Días’s new album began to wash over my ears I instantly regretted my choice of location in an urban coffee-shop, wishing instead I were…
Album Review: The History of Apple Pie – Out of View
London quintet The History of Apple Pie has been seeing the hype pile on for a while. After a stretch of live performances, during which they have been experimenting with and perfecting their…
Album Review: Local Natives – Hummingbird
On Hummingbird, Local Natives match their already developed abilities to construct propulsive, explosive indie-rock with a sense of restraint and the sublimely beautiful to produce one of the year’s finest albums so far….
Album Review: Widowspeak – Almanac
Captured Tracks Records and the city of Brooklyn, NY that it calls home have become increasingly reliable in terms of churning out quality indie artists. This week, one of those artists, psych-folk group…
Album Review: What Made Milwaukee Famous – You Can’t Fall Off the Floor
They are not from Wisconsin, but the indie rock band What Made Milwaukee Famous (the name references a country song which references the slogan of a beer bran—yeah they’re that awesome) has been…
Album Review: Camper Van Beethoven – La Costa Perdida
In the time before ‘indie-rock’ there was Camper Van Beethoven, an irreverent, experimental group formed by singer-guitarist David Lowery, whose eclectic escapades across the genres of folk, psych, and punk rock helped give…
Album Review: Shugo Tokumaru – In Focus?
A prolific multi-instrumentalist and commercially successful Japanese singer-songwriter, Shugo Tokumaru claims to draw the inspiration for his imaginative music from his daily dream diary. If this is the case for his newest album,…
Album Review: Nightlands – Oak Island
Dave Hartley, the one-man force that is Nightlands, emerges from the electronic shadows with his second album, Oak Island, out this week on Secretly Canadian. After “inviting [us] for just a little while,…
Album Review: Foxygen – We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic
All the promise reflected in Foxygen’s overdue debut full-length Take the Kids Off Broadway has been fully realized on their sophomore effort, We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic, which…
Album Review: Toro y Moi – Anything in Return
The sounds on chill-wave pioneers Toro y Moi’s new album, Anything in Return, glide through elements of pop, indie, hip-pop, house, and funk that are ceaselessly stimulated by itching, festering, fun textures that…
Album Review: Parquet Courts – Light Up Gold
Brooklyn-based indie-basement group Parquet Courts develops a fresh and winning take on slacker punk-rock over the course of their debut album, Light Up Gold. With lazy thrills reigning in their voices and aggressive,…
Album Review: Yo La Tengo – Fade
It’s like Big Star never stopped making music. Sure, it is a far more current and contemporary imagining of the essential, under-appreciated rock heroes, but the spirit is there. After all, it was…
EP Review: Lazyeyes – Lazyeyes EP
The recording quality, mixing, and production of “Nostalgia” the opener on Brooklyn quartet Lazyeyes’ self-titled, debut EP immediately arrests the listener. It’s so captivating in fact, that it took me another listen to…
Album Review: Holopaw – Academy Songs Vol 1
Distant, rapid-fire snares echo with warehouse reverb as distorted electric guitars ring out. This is hardly what I expected from Holopaw, but I’m drawn to it at once. I remember Holopaw as a…
Album Review: Memory Tapes – Grace/Confusion
Memory Tapes, the recording project of Dayve Hawk, releases its third album, Grace/Confusion, today on Carpark Records. Hawk sharpens his skills even further on this album, effortlessly blending and moving between vastly divergent…
Album Review: The Babies – Our House on the Hill
The Babies, a collaboration between Woods bassist Kevin Morby and Vivian Girls guitarist Cassie Ramone, dropped their sophomore album, Our House on the Hill, last week on the Woodsist label. The effort feels…
Album Review: Taken By Trees – Other Worlds
Before its release, Taken by Trees’ new album Other Worlds was dubbed an “impressionist poem for the Hawaiian Islands.” Rarely does an album so aptly live up to its descriptors, but that is…
Album Review: Sun Airway – “Soft Fall”
Sun Airway made waves in 2010 with their critically acclaimed debut album, Nocturne of Exploded Crystal Chandelier. The group has been one of the bands foremostly responsible for the emergence of the popular…
Album Review: The Mountain Goats – Transcendental Youth
It’s only fair to tell you right from the start that I consider the Mountain Goats my favorite band. Often my claiming this results in bewildered, blank stares that signal obliviousness. Sometimes, it…
Album Review: Generationals – Lucky Numbers EP
Generationals consider their latest EP a “New Orleans” record- not because it sounds New Orleans but simply because it just is. Recorded everywhere from City Park to the French Quarter, from friend’s apartments…
Album Review: Melody’s Echo Chamber – Melody’s Echo Chamber
I often cite myself as a lover of French music, but what I really mean is that I love old French music: the swarm of Yé-Yé girls that penetrated pop music in the…
Album Review: Dinosaur Jr. – I Bet On Sky
Dinosaur Jr. has come a long way from their first, raw album You’re Living All Over Me. While some will undoubtedly claim that the band has never been better than this energetic and…
Album Review: The Fresh and Onlys – Long Slow Dance
The opening riffs and vocals of “20 Days and 20 Nights,” the first song on The Fresh and Onlys new album, Long Slow Dance, will undoubtedly call to mind 80s staples like The…
Album Review: Deerhoof – Breakup Song
Immediately, staccato blasts of stuttering distortion emanate from the speakers. Opener “Breakup Songs” (yes in the plural although it’s a single song, as opposed to the singular noun in the album title, Breakup Song, though an…
Album Review: Cat Power – Sun
I have absolutely no qualms about calling Cat Power’s new album exactly what it is: a masterpiece. Sun marks the first album of completely original material in more than half a decade from Cat…
Album Review: Mount Eerie – Ocean Roar
Much of what I wrote about Mount Eerie’s recent release Clear Moon holds true for the album that can be considered its counterpart, Ocean Roar, out today on Mount Eerie’s only constant member Phil…
Album Review: Wild Nothing – Nocturne
Jack Tatum’s project Wild Nothing’s new album Nocturne invokes darkness, the night and the moon with frequency. It’s an apt muse, since the album often sounds like luminous orbs reflecting light in the…
Album Review: Dan Deacon – America
Dan Deacon’s America opens with a barrage of sound that contains a centerpiece of carefully mixed bouncing clicks that returns to a full-on, face-pummeling force before giving way to the album’s most pop…
Album Review: Cate Le Bon – Cyrk 2
The guitar tone on opener “What is Worse” from care le bon’s new ep Cyrk 2 is awesome. I’ve heard le bon’s voice described as haunting, but when it breaks the mix a…
Album Review: Bill Fay – Life is People
The release of Life is People, Bill Fay’s first studio album in 40 years, represents the culmination of an increasingly exciting journey for the songwriter. The story of the forgotten music legend has…
Album Review: Why? – Sod in the Seed EP
Why? fascinates in their ability to truly fuse genres. They aren’t just making hip-hop for an indie rock audience or collaborating with rap stars. Rather, they give careful attention not only to beats…
Album Review: Koko Beware – Something About the Summer
If you thought surf rock was dead, look no further than Koko Beware’s new album, Something About the Summer, for some convincing evidence to the contrary. On Something About the Summer, Koko Beware…
Album Review: Dots Will Echo – Sober is the New Drunk / Stupid is the New Dumb
Listening to a two-person band for the first time can be challenging; an inevitable doubt rises regarding the group’s ability to deliver like larger bands. But that expectation only makes discovering Dots Will…
Album Review: Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan
With Swing Lo Magellan, Dave Longstreth and Dirty Projectors have created a pitch-perfect, percussive masterpiece that perfectly toes the line between captivating experimentation and traditional pop music. If you do your Projectors homework,…
Album Review: Chain & The Gang – In Cool Blood
Almost 25 years after he helped start Nation of Ulysses, every subsequent project involving singer Ian Svenonius (The Make Up, David Candy, Weird War, etc.) has been consistently defined by his oversized, agitprop-fueled…
Album Review: Mission of Burma – Unsound
Mission of Burma’s recording and performance efforts from the late 1970s and early 1980s have long been an invaluable influence for what has become indie and alternative music. The band’s decision to get…
Album Review: Deep Time – Deep Time
One couldn’t begin to talk about Austin’s music scene and not mention the wonderful contributions of Jennifer Moore. I was immediately charmed by her voice when I first heard the now defunct Voxtrot’s…
Album Review: Twin Shadow – Confess
Through all of the promotional material surrounding Confess, the second full-length release by Twin Shadow, it isn’t hard to imagine George Lewis Jr. as a modern day Ponyboy Curtis. Donning a worn-out leather…
Album Review: A Place to Bury Strangers – Worship
The peripheries of A Place to Bury Strangers seem to have as large – or even larger – a profile as the band’s music itself. Vocalist/guitarist Oliver Ackermann helped found boutique effects pedal…
Album Review: The Daredevil Christopher Wright – The Nature of Things
The recent explosion of folksy music onto the indie scene has been paired with some interesting exploration of vocal harmonies, and The Daredevil Christopher Wright has been in step with this trend. That…
