The sedate sounds of the disc’s opening track “Illuminati” really shows the band as nuanced and complicated, taking as much from Oasis as from Audio Adrenaline, a far cry from the Jimmy Eat World tag so often placed on them. The driving beat of the drums played by Scott work well with the very linear synth lines played during “Spotlights”; the vocals effortly lifts itself above the controlled chaos of…
Less Than Jake has been around for a long time, there’s no denying that, but the band has came through with each subsequent album in ways that older acts typically are not able to do. Less Than Jake create a single in “Overrated” that is done in the same sing-songy style of acts like Bowling For Soup (1985) and Everclear (Volvo Driving Soccer Mom), a great representation for the band.…
Even though this disc is already old (it was first released in 1998), there is no doubting the fact that this track has more to do with early Sade and Journey than anything from its contemporaneous decade. The anemic sound of the disc’s first track “Color The Blue” is only saved from complete anonymity by the very emotive outputs by both Leon Vest and the guitars placed down by Garth…
Hey, as I guessed, Len sounds a lot like the lounge singers of the fifties and sixties, using an emotive bass and a twinkling piano to create an environment for eir first track, “Be The Man I Was Really Meant To Be”. Going farther into the Frank Sinatra imitation with the scat heard on the track, Len provides a middle-of-the-ground track that sounds like pretty much every track from that…
The raucous brand of rockabilly-style music that The Legendary Hucklebucks seems just as pit-worthy as any punk music, even if the style of music is aurally radically different. Their re-tooling of the traditional “rawhide” track in their “Hillbilly Throwdown” shows a complete punk influence for the members of the band; even if the band uses a bluegrass bass style at times during the track, it is the Mojo Nixon, Primus,…
The first CD I received at Warped Tour, the bandmates all seems pretty personable and I almost felt bad that it took me so long to actually cycle through to this CD. I had no clue what Legbone ever sounded like, as I had grabbed their CD right after their set (I think). Starting out with a set of metal-influenced guitar riffs, the long opening for “Swallowing Razorbalades” is a…
With titles of tracks like “Thug Appeal” and “California Split”, I had no clue that what Left is West was going to assault me with during the beginning of “Ride” would be so tender and mild. While there are some guitars that bring this song into Goo Goo Dolls territory, there is still the sense that what Left is West is doing with these early tracks is making a run…
Left Alone plays a brand of ska-punk that even Tim would be proud of. On “Every Night”, one almost expects Tim’s vocals to come slurring out of the gate. However, hearing something completely different, a bit of punk mixed in with the grit of a Replacements or a Husker Du, makes Left Alone shine amongst all the punk acts of the last few years. This is a catchy track, but…
The interesting thing about dance singers is that most of them, wherever they end up calling home, have an impeccable English accent. This is not the case with Leana. If anything, this different accent makes the tracks on “Faith in Myself” that much more special. However, this does not change the fact that a track like “Faith” is perhaps one of the worst to lead a dance album off with.…
While I have heard of companies purchasing the rights to a song so they can play it on their commercials (car companies and Apple come to mind as groups that do that fairly often), I cannot recall many instances where a company (like Nike) has paid an individual (James Murphy, who is LCD Soundsystem) to create an entire composition for the sheer purpose of promoting said company. The way I…
The slightly-snotty vocals of The Lawrence Arms work well in the restrained-punk of “Cocktails & Dreams”. What really exists as a Social Distortion-lite is a radio-friendly type of emo-influenced punk that comes through during tracks like “Quincentuple Your Money”. Each of the tracks on “Cocktails & Dreams” has that same wall of sound that really allows the smoothness of the vocals to shine; the disjointed compilation of the tracks on…
The singer-songwriter tradition ha a tremendous amount of individuals that really do not contribute anything to the genre or those that tend to cheapen it by just relying on the contributions of others to make it big (Jack Johnson and John Maher from the tradition of Dave Matthews, for example). However, from the opening strains of “God Is My Girlfriend”, a track that has hints of Sean Lennon and Soul…
Besides Desert City Soundtrack, Latterman might be Deep Elm’s best band ever. While they are not related in any way to Desert City Soundtrack beyond being on the same label, both bands share an intensity and impressive nature that cannot be removed from them. It only takes about a minute, and Latterman even bests acts like None More Black and Rise Against with a scratchy set of vocals that recalls…
When the Deep Elm press release said that this album was “classic”, I was a little bit skeptical. Sure, their last album “No Matter Where We Go” was one of the top ten albums released this year, but I assumed that it was created after a great deal of maturation by the band. No insult intended, but the music on “Turn Up The Punk” may just be a bit stronger…
Latterman has an indie-rock feel to them that one can never challenge, but when a track like “Yo, Get Into It” begins to play, one can only think of one of the shining stars of the independent music circuit, Against Me!. There are tracks that are really obtuse and individuals cannot do anything but wonder (the formless “Dear Boys” comes to mind). Latterman shows that Deep Elm is not a…
It is quite rare for an instrumental album to be this deep; from when LaTona puts forth the full sound of “Trinity Suite Part 1”, one can hear parts of Don Henley , jam bands, and Santana all in one. The reason why these tracks work so well without anything in the way of vocals is because of the ability that LaTona has in making the guitar sing with immense…
Each of the songs on “One Shot, One Kill” comes from a mixture of styles that include the Ramones and a number of the Irish punk bands (of which the best known has to be The Dropkick Murphies). “Don’t Shine Your Boots With A Half-Baked Will” is pushed to the end of what can be considered oi music, as “Don’t Shine Your Boots” is repeated no less than twenty times…
I received a copy of this album that had no album art. I had little idea what to expect from Last Conservative, especially considering that the last thing that I reviewed from Good Charamel was The Juliet Dagger single. When I heard the first track on “Pretty New Things” (“Distraction”), I began to understand that Last Conservative is for all intensive purposes a rock band. This is not to say…
Coming out like much of the alternative-rock that is popular at the current moment, The Lashes play a grungy, Sonic Youth-styled type of alt-rock with a synthesizer imposing itself on the music. Strong bass lines mark the first track, “Death By Mixtape”, which is fairly non-descript besides that. The first radio victory for The Lashes comes on “Ex-mas”, which is helped considerably from a very Darkness-like guitar solo. The guitar…
The Gallagher brothers are assholes. That’s not exactly news to anyone, but I wanted to get that out of the way up front. Yes, they thought they were God’s gift to music listeners everywhere and wanted the world to know it. Yes, they were slavishly devoted to recreating The Beatles sound on every single album. And yes, despite millions of fans around the world, the brothers were hated with just…