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Fascination is critiqued.
Explorers Club – Grand Hotel (2012)
Mike Mineo February 14, 2012 1It feels like decades since The Explorers Club released their stunning debut, Freedom Wind. Truth is, it only came out in 2008, but its timeless sound and remarkable consistency made the wait seem much
Read More » Silver Swans – Forever (2012)
Mike Mineo February 6, 2012 0Silver Swans are a duo from San Fran that excel in tightly constructed, electro-leaning pop gems. Despite the West Coast leanings, they sound like natives of the Swedish electro-pop scene, a highly versatile breeding
Read More » Field Music – Plumb (2012)
Mike Mineo January 31, 2012 2Plumb, the fourth full-length from brotherly duo Field Music, sounds like one of their liveliest releases for two reasons. One is its clear and playful homage to traditional British rock greats like XTC, Pink
Read More » Karen Dalton – 1966
Daniel Levine January 18, 2012 1The selling point and historical significance of Karen Dalton has rested entirely on the uniquely haunting timbre of her voice and the restrained brilliance with which she employed it, bending melody and finding hidden
Read More » Common – The Dreamer/The Believer (2011)
Jay Mattson December 20, 2011 1On his tenth studio album, nearly 20 years after he first hit the scene, Common is back with his best work since 2005’s Be. Some weak acting gigs and the abysmal Universal Mind Control in
Read More » Human Switchboard – Who’s Landing in My Hangar? (2011)
Daniel Levine December 5, 2011 0Human Switchboard’s Who’s Landing in My Hangar? is one of the few tenuously Cleveland connected punk/new wave classics to lack a proper reissues. Bar/None Records thankfully rescues this great album from a future of
Read More » Wax Idols – No Future (2011)
Daniel Levine December 2, 2011 3Haven’t we all gotten tired of that generic tinny lo-fi garage guitar sound? Upward and onward to newer and more glorious fuzz, I say. Down with the old! Appreciate the garage records of yore
Read More » Jules and the Polar Bears – Got No Breeding (1978)
Daniel Levine December 2, 2011 0New Wave before New Wave had really solidified. Sort of like Springsteen, but sort of not. Perhaps it’s most accurately described as an offering to bridge the Billy Joel-ers and the Rundgren-ites, a union
Read More » Drive-By Proposals – Fall Into Shadow (2005)
Daniel Levine November 30, 2011 0Ish Marquez is the hidden light at the end of the otherwise tedious anti-folk tunnel. He has the melodic gifts of Arthur Lee, but without any of the failed lyrical obtuseness. Someday there will
Read More » Styrenes – All the Wrong People are Dying (1998)
Daniel Levine November 29, 2011 0All the Wrong People Are Dying is not actually an album, but a collection of the earlier Styrenes album A Monster and a Devil alongside several 12”s and a compilation track. Somehow, despite the
Read More » The Black Keys – El Camino (2011)
Jay Mattson November 29, 2011 1The Black Keys kind of lost their edge last year with Brothers. While it was a good album, it didn’t reach the highs and lows that 2008’s Attack & Release or even 2006’s Magic
Read More » mr. Gnome – Madness in Miniature (2011)
Mike Mineo November 21, 2011 0After delivering several albums with flashes of brilliance but a lack of consistency, mr. Gnome have taken their biggest stride with Madness in Miniature, their third full-length album. Their previous two carried a common
Read More » Game Theory – Big Shot Chronicles (1986)
Daniel Levine November 18, 2011 1That Game Theory’s entire catalog is seemingly terminally out of print is a great travesty. Certainly they were one of the most important purveyors of ’80s pop music in America. Over the course of
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