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…
The magnificent synthesizers of the first track on “Get It”, “New Best Friend” mix well with Ben’s vocals to seem to pull to a U2-like sound. The explosion of the band soon after brings The Lashes closer to current trends in music, but there is that same sort of boisterous rock influencing each step that the band makes on “Get It”. To their credit, the patchwork approach of The Lashes…
Ichiban (Number one) in the world (Candidly, it is however Kakkoii (Cool) without affectation.) The new Shonen Knife album, “Free Time” is a product of Japan’s invincibility, with nearly three decades of releases and thousands of shows to their credits, the girls of SK offer an English version of their 2010 Japanese release “Free Time” to the fans in North America. Shonen Knife’s latest CD “Free Time” is hard and…
The hopeful pop of “Sketches (20 Something Life) blend together the eighties rock of acts like Rod Stewart and more current alternative acts. What results is something that is much more than its constituent parts. Individuals will be dancing throughout the rest of the summer and into the fall and winter with the music of La Rocca. The fact that the band can stop all that they are doing and…
There is a retro flair to La Rocca that uses a lot of the angular rock of acts like Franz Ferdinand to come up with something that is cliché but not necessarily trite. Mixing in a little synthesizer to increase the fuzz during the track, the title track is a romp through New Romanticism and all subsequent genres until the present day. “Sketches (20 Something Life)” is a much more…
The opening to “Luminous” is simple, with only the guitar and drums being audible in this instrumental track. There is enough differentiation between those two’s interaction that individuals can maintain their interest throughout. The extended length of the track (pushing well over 6 minutes) is a gamble, as the band might lose fans if they do not keep things up to snuff on this track. The band pushes it a…