Rating: 5 / 5 Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy
Kathryn Calder is the other female voice filling out The New Pornographers and prior to that she spent a good chunk of her early career singing with the haunting band Immaculate Machine; but Kathryn Calder is more than the sum of the cool bands she’s played in.
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 3 / 5 Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy
Spencer Krug deserves some mega kudos for pulling a reasonably good pop record out of the mire of a terrible first impression: Expo 86’s opening offering, ‘Cloud Shadow On The Mountain,’ is a bizarre song.
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 3.5 / 5 Reviewer: Kevin Hartford
The title track of # Zero With A Bullet is about a singer-songwriter struggling with failure, then struggling equally with the prospect of success.
Posted in Folk + Roots, 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 of [...]
Posted in Electronica, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 5 / 5 Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy
As summer approaches music blogs explode with promises of “hot summer” releases, hype machines overheat and explode. Suddenly it’s very easy for a whole slew of excellent albums to get lost in the shuffle of big bass-y noise and Lady Gaga’s new video.
Posted in Folk + Roots, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 4 / 5 Reviewer: Kevin Hartford
Montreal-based indie band Stars has two lead vocalists – Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan – and it’s to their credit that they’re able to pull off the boy-and-girl-trading-verses shtick without seeming contrived, cutesy, or overly twee.
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
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 corrupted [...]
Posted in Electronica, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 3 / 5 Reviewer: Trent Depue
When you’re as big as Tom Petty is, you can pretty much do whatever you want. And with as well regarded a career as he has had, he has every right to have that mindset.
Posted in Jazz + Blues, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
