Rating: n/a Reviewer: Garth Paulson
That’s right, not applicable. Though I’m usually apprehensive of assigning a rating based upon my subjective impressions of an album at the best of times, I just can’t bring myself to do it for Joanna Newsom’s latest, the triple album Have One on Me, for two reasons:
Posted in Folk + Roots, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 3 / 5 Reviewer: Kevin Hartford
Imagine Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion covered by Sigur Ros on a spaceship that makes frequent pit stops in the late 1980s
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 3 / 5 Reviewer: Nathan Atnikov
If you were going to criticize the Shout Out Louds 2007 album Our Ill Wills, your angle would be the not-so-subtle Cure influences. In fact, influence might not be a strong enough word. But the album was good enough that it didn’t matter
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 4.5 / 5 Reviewer: Greg Hutton
Say Us, the full-length debut from Zeus, is composed of elements that make for great rock and roll: it is fun without being a corny novelty, it is affecting without being pretentious, and it includes great melodic sensibilities without sacrificing edge. Each song is distinct and serves an identifiable [...]
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 2.5 / 5 Reviewer: Kevin Hartford
Most of the songs on True Devotion are little more than Seattle folk singer Rocky Votolato’s voice over an acoustic guitar. While the stripped-down production does create a certain amount of intimacy between artist and listener, it also has the unintended side effect of showcasing how unexceptional Votolato is [...]
Posted in Folk + Roots, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 4.5 / 5 Reviewer: Andrew Mitchell
Considering Charlotte Gainsbourg’s third release, IRM was conceived while she was recovering from a brain hemorrhage and developed while filming the disturbingly violent Antichrist, it’s remarkable that the album is not a complete exercise in abjectness.
Posted in Folk + Roots, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 4 / 5 Reviewer: Trent Depue
Eight years after his most recently released studio material, the often eccentric Peter Gabriel is taking on a new and ambitious project in the form of a covers album, which will eventually see a companion record featuring all of the covered artists here performing some of Gabriel’s works.
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 4 / 5 Reviewer: Kevin Hartford
Dear Companion is a folk album that sounds like a country album, and it wouldn’t be difficult to imagine Kentucky-based singer-songwriters Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore as the opening band for alt-country acts like Ryan Adams or Jenny Lewis in her Watson Twins days.
Posted in Folk + Roots, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
