Amy Grant – Greatest Hits / 2007 Sparrow / 19 Tracks / http://www.amygrant.com / http://www.sparrowrecords.com / I know that for a while back during my senior year of high school and the summer before the first year of my undergraduate college career, I liked a lot of Christian music. I still never went (and really never have been) to church, but I liked the sound of sounds in that style…
Nothing that makes this world a better place lasts for only three minutes. Nothing of relevance embraces you and abruptly leaves afterwards. Music does not need to be divided into five minute long chapters, verse-chorus-verse. Music needs room not rules, it needs freedom not boundaries – Long Distance Calling make sure to do exactly that.
Agitprop Vol. 2 / :20 / 28M / [email protected] / This zine is a very informative look at resisting the system, and it covers much of the “Health and Safety at Militant Actions†booklet, often down to the “Tâ€. I’m not sure which came first, but the “copyleft†present in the zine really makes the question a moot one. Some of the stories are funny, like “Brussel Sprouts and the…
Out on Friendly Fire Recordings January 22nd, 2008. Sharing two members with the ever-popular Shout Out Out Out Out and hailing from Edmonton, Alberta this heavily 60’s influenced psych-pop band will be releasing their debut January 22nd, 2008 through Friendly Fire in the US and Pop Echo Records in Canada. The Whitsundays certainly have a knack for writing yellowed, reverb-wrapped pop music, borrowing from the grand tradition of English psychedelia,…
Matt White – Best Days / 2007 Geffen / 11 Tracks / http://www.mattwhitemusic.com / http://www.geffen.com / Matt White is one of the few artists that we have reviewed that does not have anything in the way of a Wikipedia. This is odd, considering that the vast majority of individuals that have achieved prominence in music have one. This is not to say that White isn’t famous; a quick perusal of…
Kindercore Records is pleased to announce its first official music release after rising from the dead earlier this year. King of Prussia’s debut mini-LP, Save the Scene, will be released on January 29, 2008. It’s the kind of erudite, sparkling pop music that would do the label’s sterling back catalog (Of Montreal, I Am The World Trade Center) proud.
Afunctional #1 / June / Half-Sized / 20 Pages / [email protected] / http://afunctional.tripod.com / 2 East Franklin Ave. #11 , Minneapolis MN, 5504 / This zine is a real-life representation of all those “independent†publication that magazines like Artnews fondly recall, although no one has ever heard of them. I hadn’t heard of Afunctional until AMC 2003, where Gerald Prokop was tabling. This issue is very carefully done, with a…
Though she is now known as the long-lost British folkie who was championed by and ultimately recorded with Devendra Banhart and his psych-folk cohorts, Vashti Bunyan was once set on a course for a far different life. Set up with the Mick Jagger/Keith Richards – penned “Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind” as a debut single, she was given a healthy push toward pop stardom, but failed to generate…
All My Loving / 2007 MVD / 52 Minutes / http://www.mvdb2b.com / The title for All My Loving corresponds to a Beatles song of the same name. That fact is obvious for those individuals that grew up with The Beatles, but for someone that never was a huge fan of them such as myself, the fact was new to me. This movie is not new in any sense of the…
Given the current climate of the hip-hop world — where the most ear-bendingly innovative production often serves as aural sweetener for the by-rote thug lyricism of so much mainstream rap — the notion of “indie” hip-hop (at least as a signifier of boundary-pushing music) probably seems quaint at best and woefully outdated at worst. The Baltimore, MD (via D.C.)-based Food For Animals are all-too-aware of this conundrum, but rather than…
