The guitar-heavy opening to “He Bit Me” opens up into a fuller instrumental track which is comparable to the post-Fugazi pre-emo acts, bands like The Appleseed Cast and Desert City Soundtrack. The track is only ninety seconds long but the arrangements are complicated and fulfilling; individuals would be fools to not be fans of Look Mexico after this first track. This same type of rich instrumentation continues with “I Can’t…
Longwave is a band that has been inculcated to Automatic for the People-era R.E.M., as well as most the bands from that era. This is not to say that they are necessarily dated or cliché, but to the contrary they start off “There’s A Fire” with a hard-hitting earworm of a track, replete with hard-hitting drums and snaky synth lines. The move towards and away from an intense sound during…
I must admit, that I sometimes become confused with all the different bands that are coming forth with a newer rock type of sound. A few years back, there was some semblance of differentiation between them – one could understand what songs were Disturbed, which were Godsmack’s, and which ones Papa Roach cut. However, I’m seeing (or hearing) a little more collusion of these different styles in current rock music.
In the last few years, there have been a number of different iterations of metal that really freshen up the genre. I recall a few years back, for example, reviewing a collection of metal songs for kids. This time around, metal tracks are given the flamenco treatment. Where fans lightly into metal will know a few tracks on “Heavy Mellow” (such as Megadeth’s “In My Darkest Hour”, Ozzy’s “Bark At…
It takes about a half-minute to get into the groove, but Lonely H starts off “Kick Upstairs” with a track that frankly recalls Rivers Cuomo’s vocals with a style of rock that seems more fitting for the seventies than the current period. In a sense, there seems to be a concerted effort to recall the retro type sound of nineties alternative rock with songs like “Marmalade Sky”, as the track…
I have a Locust poster sitting in my room as we speak. I really thought when I first heard about them I would have no desire to listen to it, but I downloaded a copy of “Plague Landscapes” and was hooked. This is something different from The Locust, as some semblance of easily-discernible structure (I’m sure their previous material had some high-faluting, difficult structure that I couldn’t begin to dissect)…
Starting off their disc with “Alchemy”, Lock and Key come forth with the energy that begat their first CD on Deep Elm, “No Fate”. The fuzziness that ends this track just adds a dark feeling to the opening of the follow-up track, “Process of Molting”. One thing that must be said about Lock and Key is that they are virtuosos with each facet of their being – whether it is…
A one-hit wonder for many individuals who only listen to popular music, Local H has been releasing albums constantly since their largest commercial success, “As Good As Dead”, hit stores in April of 1996. Much has changed for the band since “Bound For the Floor”, though, and “Whatever Happened to P.J. Soles” is an album that shows a band in transition, moving from a Offspring-but-more-rock sound in “California Songs” to…
The odd echo that starts off “Without Your Song” makes the vocals all the more interesting. The instrumentation is so bare as to be non-existent; “Albatross” changes things due to its instrumental opening (a minute and a half worth) but ultimately sticks with a very creepy type of sound. The echoing present in this track mixes in with an electronic sound to change things up, but one knows that the…
There is a classic sound to Living Things that will have parents of children who buy this album walk in and ask whether this is early Crue or Foreigner. During a song like “Bom Bom Bom”, Living Things come up with a style that is not as stark and intermediary as Buckcherry, but rather is a smooth blend of styles that work in 2006. The production is immaculate, and show…
This may be the first split single that I’ve ever received. That’s right, Little Klimt (a singer-songwriter out of New York) and Chofferson (an artist out of Los Angeles) each contribute one song to this split, so to say that individuals may have a problem trying to get a genuine read on their styles is understating it. For Little Kilmt’s track, one can hear the confines of a garage as…
Little Brazil comes from that brand of emo-rock that holds as a deity Rivers Cuomo, but unlike the sixties-influenced pop of Weezer, some genuine feelings are held on Little Brazil’s “You and Me”. Leading off the disc with “Now” and skillfully tying it in with the heart-beat/ethereal nature of “The Way You Listen”, “You and Me” is so much more than an album – it is a journal entry, a…
Fables of the Reconstruction, the third album from college rock poster boys R.E.M., showed the band was evolving toward a tighter, more cohesive sound. Sure Murmur and Reckoning will always be trotted out by indie music snobs as among the band’s best – and they were both good albums, unlike anything else that was being played at that time – but Fables of the Reconstruction was far more consistent. Songs…
Obviously Mark Lind is the lead singer of The Ducky Boys, so at some point the two acts will have some general sound in common. Little did I know how common the sounds would be between “Death and Jail” and The Ducky Boys’ last album “The War Back Home”. “No Future’ is the first big hit of the disc, which is built on the guitars that made Face to Face…
Limbeck quickly moves between styles in just the first few tracks of “Let Me Come Home”. The first track, “People Don’t Change” really uses a lot of the momentum generated from an alt country style, while the follow up “Long Way To Go” seems to take a page from all the early Hippie acts. Coming back to the country type of style with “Everyone’s In The Parking Lot”, Limbeck really…
Limbeck, yet another band off Doghouse Records. Limbeck, band I had only heard of before putting on this new disc. Limbeck, band that plays their rock band roles utterly perfectly. While they are not trying to make their own agenda with “Hi, Everything’s Great”, they are trying to put out the best sounding power-rock out. And with tracks like “Julia”, they might be doing just that. Each song is constructed…
“June Gloom” starts off The Like’s new disc, and the vocals laid on the track by Z Berg really give the impression that eir has been more influenced by Thom Yorke than anything. Sure, there is a little more substantive of a nod towards this influence because of the very mid-nineties, jangly-alternative played by the band, but the vocals are pretty damning of themselves. Perhaps the most compelling part of…
Mixing the best of Lucero with the vocals of Eddie Vedder, The Light Wires’ Jeremy add the icing to a confectionary orgasm. Laid back to the extreme, The Light Wires go for the road not taken by fellow labelmates Thistle. As a result, this disc has a much more polished sound and radio-friendliness that something like “Tired Anchor” just didn’t have. Eons beyond anything a jam band could do, The…
I was born in 1983, so that is likely the reason why I was not familiar with The Poppees’ work before picking up this album. The way I see it, after hearing “Pop Goes The Anthology”, The Poppees were really influential in ultimately determining where American punk would go, in the years immediately preceding acts like The Ramones and Blondie.
I was expecting something completely different from Toby Lightman after looking at the front cover of “Bird On A Wire”. I was expecting something largely acoustic based and quiet, in the vein of artists like Leah Zicari and the like, but what the disc starts out with is something gospel based with “Don’t Wake Me”. After that introduction ends, something pop-laced and country-tinged comes into focus. What I can compare…