Rating: 3 / 5 Reviewer: Cam Hoff Abel Tesfaye is the one man R&B wrecking crew performing under the moniker of The Weeknd. I say this because Echoes of Silence is his third album of the 2011 calendar year, marking the final chapter of a thematic trilogy of mixtapes. When the first album, House of [...]
Posted in Electronica, Music Reviews, Rap + Hip-Hop
Rating: 3.5 / 5 Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy Back in the day – “the day” being the latter part of the last century and the earliest days of this one – record stores had a little section called “IDM” (intelligent dance music). Yes, really. Somehow genre geeks found a measurable difference between smart and stupid dance [...]
Posted in Electronica, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 4 / 5 Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy James Blake’s debut is shocking. Listening to it, it’s impossible to not sit, mouth agape asking yourself, “is this kid for real? Is this guy really this young? Is this really his debut? “ And the answer to all three is an undeniable yes.
Posted in Electronica, Music Reviews
Rating: 2 / 5 Reviewer: Andre Guimond It’s easy to find something to like about almost every song on Pot Calls Kettle Black, kind-of-one-man-band Toronto-based Small Sins’ third proper album. Unfortunately, in most cases there’s also something as equally off-putting
Posted in Electronica, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 3 / 5 Reviewer: Kevin Hartford Your enjoyment of Scissor Sisters will depend heavily on your attitude toward disco music. If a novelty band with members named Ana Matronic, Babydaddy, Randy Real, and Del Marquis playing a tongue-in-cheek Pro Tools mash-up of the Bee Gees and Queen seems like it would be your cup [...]
Posted in Electronica, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 1 / 5 Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy Body Talk 1 is a strange album: despite it being total shit people seem to love it. Has ironic interest gone so far that irony can no longer truly exist?
Posted in Electronica, Music Reviews
Rating: 3.5 / 5 Reviewer: Greg Hutton Anticipation tends to accompany apprehension when a beloved cult band comes back from an extended hiatus. While a group like Mission of Burma proved that they could still produce albums essential to their discography 20 years after initially breaking up, a diehard’s inescapable fear of the gospel being [...]
Posted in Electronica, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 5 / 5 Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy Just to get it over with: the one (albeit small) downside to the exceptional This is Happening is that there is no song for secret summer kisses. James Murphy accounts for every possible circumstance of bad behaviour save for that one: bad choices on dark, hot, summer nights [...]
Posted in Electronica, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
