The brainchild of one individual, The Matthew Show is a fitting nomen for anything recorded by Matthew. Starting out with the country and hair-metal influenced track “Bring Me Safely Down”. Mixing a catchy chorus with a dual-part harmony and a violin flittering through the track, The Matthew show really starts the disc out on a high note. Moving into the building-up track “Old Enough”, The Matthew Show tumbles a bit,…
Starting out “Political Pop” with a brooding set of drums and an earthy bass line, the quirky, Neil Tennant-like voice of Matt Angus voice seems out of place until the equally quirky guitar riff, U2/Jimi Hendrix-influenced, comes onto the stage. In what can only be called the most dense five minutes of any track, Matt Angus Thing throws in a set of back up vocals (Kathy Phillips) as well as…
I really wasn’t expecting The Matches to sound as they do on “E. Von Dahl”, because they play a catchy brand of pop-punk in the same spirit as Blink-182 or New Found Glory. After spinning through most of the CD, I finally realized why The Matches were signed to Epitaph. Each track is perfectly crafted, hard to remove from one’s ears, and The Matches pull off this album so well…
Another emo band that is in the vein of Boys Night Out, Quickening, and The Early November. “Playing For Keeps” has more than a passing similarity to “Seventy Times Seven” in the aural sameness of the chorus, with Matchbook’s version only moving away from Brand New’s in the aural atmosphere inculcated into the track. A majority of the tracks on “Stories & Alibis” fall into the same dynamic with the…
Aside from having one of the best band names… well ever, The Dandy Warhols also spent much of the 90’s churning out great Velvet Underground inspired psychedelic pop rock that sounded like nothing any of their other contemporaries were recording at the time. The Capitol Years culls many of the best songs from the band’s four major label records, including “Not if You Were the Last Junkie on Earth,” “Bohemian…
Matadors play a brand of rock that is very influenced by the seventies brand of rock and the first wave of acts (Corrosion of Conformity, Fu Manchu) that were influenced by that brand of rock. Thus, when the band starts the disc with “Like A Matador Pt II”, individuals can hear all of these influences well. The first track is a hard-rocking track that does not fail to impress; what…
Mastodon is not quite as hard as many individuals I’ve talked to would have me think. However, this does not mean that they are not intense or brutal, as “The Wolf Is Loose” is the perfect blend of speed metal, sludge rock, and acid rock. This means that the band is flying off the handle even as they call forth acts like Venom, Led Zeppelin, and Judas Priest. Even during…
Catalyst and Mass Movement of the Moth create this split album, and do it in an interesting way. Instead of having “sides” where each band is able to show their wares, the bands go one after another fr the entirety of the disc’s 11 tracks. The Catalyst thus start off the disc with “Panic Don’t Panic” with a track that is loud and boisterous, and it brings in a heavy…
Mass Movement of the Moth does not give their fans any time to get situated before they are assaulted by the noisy approach of the band. The disc’s first track is “Idle Minds Speak In Binary”, and perhaps Mass Movement of the Moth’s best addition to the repertoire of popular music is the turn on a dime style that allows the band to go forth and use hardcore, noise, metal,…
Maroon 5 made it big a few years back with their track “This Love”. Well, it is a few years after their last album “Songs About Jane” (5, actually), and the band is back with this, their first cut off of “It Won’t Be Soon Before Long”. As for the value of this single, there are only two tracks on the disc, and they represent the clean and album tracks…
German, vegan, and straight-edge, Maroon comes out of the gate (after their minute introductory track, “Catharsis” finishes) furious and full of the Cookie Monster spirit. The double-bass comes out fast and furious on this disc, but seriously, just because you can hit them 200 times in a minute doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to do it. In fact, “The Worlds Havoc” just has Nick’s drums create the same sonic…
The opening of “The Hidden One” is something that would confuse listeners, as the track could also portend the opening of “Time Of Your Life (Good Riddance)” by Green Day. However, the country style of Cody Marks comes up heavily soon after this introduction, and “The Hidden One” assumes a style that is not quite unlike that of a blend of Joni Mitchell and Pete Seeger. The overall sound of…
Steven Mark comes through with a very poppy style that really looks more towards Sean Lennon than the (comparable) hard rock of the Foo Fighters. The style of “Aloneaphobe” really feels as if Mark walked out of the early seventies, specifically taking equal parts Jimmy Buffet and James Taylor to make a “third wave” of music. While tracks like “Weak” are not the most innovative in terms of arrangement or…
“Jekyll Walks” shows The Mark as an emo band that really lives up to their EP title; the song is construed quite like a sea, in which the music breaks over individuals incessantly, only pulling back with the desire to hit the listener harder with the next wave. This is not necessarily only the emo of bands like Senses Fail, but something that has a larger set of influences than…
I thought that the retro rock of bands like Jet and The Storkes was dead. I was praying and hoping that it was, and then a band like Mardo comes on the scene. Mind you, there have been a lot of bands that have looked back to their rock influences and have created amazing albums; Wolfmother and The Darkness (for their first album at least) are two that come to…
What do you get when you mix the political leanings and intelligence of Bad Religion with the super-dramatic vocals of System of a Down, and swaddle it with the vestments of Pennywise and Strike Anywhere? Marathon, of course – their first track “Painting By Numbers” immediately attacks the listener, the government, and anyone else that gets too close. Starting out their second track “I Don’t Have A Dancing Problem” with…
The opening strains of “Breakfast at Ikea” sound like Enigma, or like Tori Amos if ey plugged into an outlet. Soon after, a disaffected set of vocals attempt a blend of The Smiths and Depeche Mode before kicking into a very seventies arrangement. Overall, Map goes through a number of styles in their creation of a Map-specific sound. By crafting this sound at such an early point during “San Francisco…
“Six Demon Bag” starts with a very Western-sounding piano backing up a set of vocals that have to be linked to Frank Zappa. The overall sound of the track is very Spartan, but I would be damned if the band is not tremendously interesting throughout the track. “Six Demon Bag” is not necessarily an album of singles, but really acts as if Man Man had an idea on their mind…
To be honest, most individuals that are the driving force of the music scene – the all important 16-21 age grouping – will have no idea who Buffalo Tom, Dinosaur Jr, or the Lemonheads were. Hell, I’m 22 and I missed out on each of those bands by a good five years. However, the opening to this disc (which has Hilken Mancini from Fuzzy and Chris Colbourn from Buffalo Tom)…
The slow, simplistic and deliberate arrangements that open up “Open Surgery” are maybe a little slower than the band should really put forth at this early juncture. The effect that “Give Me A Sign” really has on listeners is one of wonder; is this track slowed down enough to be noticeable? “Say What You Want” continues this sound and really starts to show what is so innovative about this band;…