Rating: 3.5 / 5 Reviewer: Kevin Hartford Old Ideas is aptly named. It has all the elements you’d expect from a Leonard Cohen record: lyrics about sex and mortality and religion, cooing female backup vocalists, sparse, piano-heavy instrumentation, and Cohen’s trademark chainsmoker grumble speak-singing from beginning to end.
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 4 / 5 Reviewer: Cam Hoff As the frontman of The Hold Steady, Craig Finn is the cilantro of the indie music scene – people seem to either love his brand of talky/shouty vocals or just don’t care for it at all.
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 3.5 / 5 Reviewer: Nathan Atnikov Rock and roll is often the domain of the young, and when the old try to inhabit it, they can come off looking desperate or, worse yet, clueless. Then there are some older bands who come along and show the kids how its done. Imperial Teen is one [...]
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 4 / 5 Reviewer: Nathan Atnikov Johanna and Klara Soderberg are First Aid Kit, a prodigious sister duo being hailed as the next great addition to the retro Americana movement currently housed by the likes of Fleet Foxes and others.
Posted in Folk + Roots, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 4 / 5 Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy Only John K. Samson, Canada’s punk poet laureate, would title a song ‘Longitudinal Centre’. Longitudinal is not a word oft thrown around in pop music. Much of what Samson can and does do lyrically is not oft thrown around in pop music. Samson is, arguably, Canada’s best lyricist [...]
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 4.5 / 5 Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy Let’s just say it, get it out in the open, so then we can just realize that it is absolutely irrelevant and move on: Kathleen Edwards is dating Bon Iver front man Justin Vernon. We good? Ok! Moving on…
Posted in Country + Western, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 4 / 5 Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy Somehow—and likely this is a larger question of music history in general—the blues seem to transcend trend and popularity, bringing The Black Keys with them. It further seems that no matter the state of pop music, no matter what is crazy, popular and floating all over the internet, [...]
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy “We had a different name. It was Sparrow and then it was Oh Sparrow but then we […] just couldn’t use it and I was in my dad’s basement looking at book titles and I saw one that was called “Imaginary Beings” and one that said “Invisible Cities” and we liked the [...]
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
