Mike Howe is a veteran in the music business, but I feel that ey has continually kept eir ear to the ground. This means that there is a vibrancy to each of the tracks on Island of Anywhere that simply is not present on a release at another musician’s similar part of career. After the strains of Beyond the Mountains wrap up, listeners are provided with an emotionally affecting track…
After doing the magazine for a number of years, I have started to receive second and third discs put out by the same bands. Oftentimes it takes a year or two to create the disc, but it always feels as if the band just sent me their last EP or LP a short time ago. This is the case with Scale Model, who garnered a very respectable rating for their…
While my last studio experience with S.B.C./The Freedom Fries was with 2000’s “The Dicktad EP”, this somewhat later release really shows a band that is much more polished. Starting off the disc with “Dictator”, SBC mixes their own brand of punk from a list of influences that are in themselves legendary : The Clash, Rancid, The Dead Kennedys. More garagey than The Charlestons, SBC still has the hooks that make…
The fullness of Say Anything during their “Is A Real boy” is something that other emo bands should strive to achieve. There are three or four things happening at any one time, and individuals will marvel at the multiple harmonies that little the soundscape during tracks like “Belt”. Let individuals get one thing straight; this is not the emo of acts like Bright Eyes but of acts like early Jimmy…
For some reason, I was under the assumption that Saxon was a lot harder band than they turn out to be on “Dogs Of War”. “Don’t Worry” has much more to do with bands like Cinderella and Every Mother’s Nightmare than Venom or Vader or any of the other five-letter metal bands. “Big Twin Rolling” shifts the band sound a little bit to a Hagar (Can’t Drive 55) or Lizzy…
Hey, its Purple-Rain era Prince meets any track from a John Hughes soundtrack and reconstituted into what is Saturn. The bad thing is that the recording of this album actually sounds as if it was on equipment from the eighties – the droning of emptiness is present throughout the disc, a sterility pervades the disc. As well as the aforementioned sterility, there is a repetition to the instrumentation on the…
I reviewed Saturn nearly a year ago, and lets just say I wasn’t too much of a fan. However, opening eir disc with “Wild”, Saturn has nearly recuperated some of the weaknesses of the previous disc. The entire effort is much more solid than eir previous work – the backing instrumentation actually coddles and cuddles Saturn’s vocals, accentuating them in all the right place. For “Wild”, the track is transformed…
There is a conscious decision by Joe Satriani to come up with a guitar line to open up eir “Super Colossal” that is indistinguishable from Billy Squier’s “Stroke Me”. After this riff goes the way of the dinosaur, something that resembles Nelson’s “Love and Affection” and Winger’s “In The Heart of the Young” dominates the rest of the track. Joe Satriani has definite guitar skills that is true, but with…
In 1956, a 21-year-old Elvis Aaron Presley was on the verge of becoming a phenomenally influential music icon. Recently signed to RCA, 1956 was the year his debut came out and more importantly the year his (big gasp) lewd hip movements on The Ed Sullivan Show created massive amounts of controversy and cemented his legacy as the first real badass of rock and roll, a legacy that even bloating and…
I remember seeing Rachael Lampa back in 2000, opening with Stacie Orrico and Plus One. Even back then, ey was able to tie together a tremendous amount of passion and love for the Lord that was absolutely infection. I believe that the production of All We Need provides listeners with a fresh and vibrant look into Lampa’s sound. Lampa’s voice is bolstered especially well during tracks like My One and…
The reggae that Satori plays starts off from the first kick of the drums. “Celebration” is a slow-tempo track that really hides a barely-masked intensity, created most by the bass and horns on the track. The slower tempo of the disc allows the technicality of the band to shine through properly, but there is no driving beat in the first section of the disc that really makes people want to…
Putting together a little bit of Fiona Apple with Diamanda Galas for eir first track, “Own Skin”, the Spartan nature of the track works to accentuate the vocal inflection of Sarah. Going back to the watering-hole for the second track, “Sweet Candlelight”, albeit with a R&B-infused bassline, Brindell seems similar to Leah Zicari in eir seamless ability to move through genres. If I recall, Zicari’s album started off in much…
Striking about this disc is the great recording that marks this, a live show. Everything that surrounds Brindell sounds studio, with the only minor weakness comes with some of the ancillary instruments, which do sound somewhat live. What is interesting about this disc is the fact that Brindell’s own brand of vocals mesh in only the most tangential ways with the instrumentation on the disc. Take a listen to “4AM…
The Santiago Steps are a band that really don’t portray a specific style in their music. Starting off “Points & Corners” with tracks that draw together indie-rock with America-era 70s rock, the band will please fans of all style. The incorporation of a synthesizer along with the straight-forward delivery of the vocals on “Meant 4 U” makes the track come forth with a bizarre style of dancability. What is perhaps…
Kyle Eastwood has been releasing albums since 1998, but I do not feel as if ey has really had that one defining moment for eir as a musician. However, I believe that Eastwood’s work on Songs From The Cheateau represents eir magnum opus, and that each of the tracks here provide listeners with a great insight for whom Eastwood is and will be in the years and albums to come.…
Sandy Dillon is the oughts’ version of Cindy Lauper, pre-suck Liz Phair, and Shirley Manson. Totally pop-tinged alternative rock with a sultry voice that doesn’t really break any new ground in terms of musical style or arrangement. Sure, the early sixties Bond-like orchestra (in “It Must Be Love”) and synth-noises copped from Massive Attack might be aurally pleasing, but not ultimately sating. Each track treads the same ground as the…
The opening track to “Come With Me” is “Turn on the Music”, and from the opening strains of that track, Roger Sanchez seems to have cemented eir place in the dance hall of fame. There is not that much happening in regards to differing beats or sounds on the track, but the repetition gets tattooed into a listener’s head, while the smooth vocals will get individuals grooving even as they…
Metal knows no cultural or geographical bounds. That is precisely why Denmark’s Anubis Gate has came out of the gate with some of the most furious metal that we have heard so far in 2011. The band is able to tie together a number of disparate styles and sub-genres of metal into something that is fully unique. The band’s sound has changed considerably with Jacob Hansen out as vocalist and…
Chakachas’ “Jungle Fever” (the S-Man’s Jungle Edit) is the first track on “Choice”, and the whole “classics” tag is nowhere more deserving than it is on this track. However, the game is bumped up further with the inclusion of the very-Santana like guitars that are dominant throughout “Darkest Light”, a track by Lafayette Afro Rock. The track sounds almost as if it was sampled for an early nineties rap track.…
The Sainte Catherines are an interesting band to say the least. While most of the punk bands currently out can easily be given a tag, the style of songs like “If There’s Black Smoke Over A Bridge, It’s Over” is hard to pin down as being a specific blend of styles. At some point, individuals just have to admit that The Sainte Catherines are a great band, regardless of what…