Lagwagon has been around for tons of years (older than most of their fans, since they started in 1988). There is a comparable chunk of Lagwagon’s sound to The Vandals, in that a number of their tracks have the same style of hair-metal guitars. Couple that with a chunky bass that plays a major role in a number of tracks (especially “Automatic”) and one has theformula for a sold, spastic…
Not really what I could categorize as emo rock, Long Since Forgotten mixes acts like Jimmy Eat World with the Goo Goo Dolls, using rich recording to mesh the two sounds without any discernible seams. All and all, the tracks go by incredibly fast, working just as well as incidental music as front-level driving music. Josh’s vocals on every track are ultimately clear and act in different capacities, creating something…
With the best recording of anything to come out of Greencastle, Lagging Leftward’s style of Led Zepplin and Lynyrd Skynyrd-like rock is also a bold step in a direction that was previously untouched by the whole of Greencastle music. One thing that hampers the band would be the length of each track on this demo, with the shortest track averaging out at over 4 minutes. Repetition is the key for…
Patti LaBelle is one of those artists that I know was big in the past, but has not really done anything earthshaking since I became cognizant of music. For those that do not know, LaBelle started out as a singer for the Bluebelles, changed their name to Labelle, and then broke free from the rest of the pack starting in 1976. From 1962 to 1993, LaBelle charted tens of songs,…
The opening piano to “He Was There” should be reminiscent to listeners to Des’ree’s “Kissing You”. In fact, the general style of “He Was There” is tracked alongside that song, even if the act adds a considerable amount of gospel influence to the mix. The decision to put the longest track at the beginning of the disc is an interesting one; this gambit has sunk many a band when they…
I like how all of the band’s album titles have dealt with illegal immigration. This is not the next Manic Hispanic, but rather an interesting band that starts off their “We Came To Take Your Jobs Away” with a track that blends together a They Might Be Giants sound with a more Middle Eastern sound. While Kultur Shock is confident that their song will never be on the radio during…
The raw exuberance that Woven Bones seethes from its tightly-wound inner coil of turmoil isn’t exactly the stuff daydreams are made of, but as their menacing presence has been culminating over the past couple of years, it’s now clear as daylight that their finest efforts would come together on this, their debut LP. As they’ve effectively dragged the shards of their tattered souls with building ferocity on each of their…
There is a tremendous comparison available here in Kronowitt’s case, in which Kronowitt sets eirself to be the inheritor of the Elvis Costello mantle; the heavily-vocal opening to “Elements” really subjugates the instrumental side of things to Kronowitt’s emotive voice. The first real hit on this album is “Ballad of Pete & Heather”; the pitch-shifting aspect of Kronowitt’s vocals taking on a Marc Schultz tone at times. The Spanish-infused guitar…
The opening track to “Green City” is called “Vanity”, and the approach done by the lead singer is something that has as its predecessor the over the top singing styles of fifties musicals. At the same time, the instrumentation that is present in this opening track has much more in common with the style of psychedelic rock that acts like The Doors were known for in the late sixties. To…
You know what would have been cool for Dave Koz to do? 12 different reinterpretations of Alien Ant Farm’s hit “At The Movies”. Well, this album is not it, and instead features Koz doing eir reinterpretation of a number of important films (Moon River, Cinema Paradiso, Schindler’s List). While there are hints of the original vocals for “Over The Rainbow”, a soulful sax line starts up soon after the vocals…
In a sense, the Kola Koca Death Squad takes the best parts of Johnny Rotten and Lou Reed, while simultaneously working under a psychedelic-influenced instrumentation to make something memorable for the first track on this disc, “Rising Son”. What is really a chaotic and emotional-filled set of vocals during “Power Condition” are really dominated and removed from their context with the very angular and proper arrangements on the track. When…
“Knuckles and Nipples”, the band (and the disc’s) theme, comes through with a fury that initially begins with a very growling, Doom-like vocal quality to MC Homeless’ vocals. In “Your Taste In Music Sucks”, the band does really not allow itself enough to really get out and construct an distinct sound for their track. The song is really just a car crash before the occupants could get up to full…
Jess Klein starts “Strawberry Lover” with one of the most bold steps forward on a disc I’ve ever heard, with “Darkroom” mixing together punk directness, country, musicals (think “Little Shop of Horrors”) and gospel in well less than three minutes. “Shonalee” has to be the farthest that Jess can go away from “Darkroom”, but the nuanced guitar lines on the track ensures the same level of quality being reached by…
Coming out of the gate with some impressive two part harmonies, especially during “Through the Width of a Straw”, The Kite-Eating Tree makes their own disc into an interesting journey. Mixing up a great deal of distortion with saccharine-sweet vocals, “Method: Fail, Repeat…” is an amalgam of two major stylistic genres: what is being called emo-rock (in the vein of Taking Back Sunday and Story of the Year) and an…
The sly sound of “Sillhouettes” mixes well with the light instrumentation that individuals are confronted with at the onset of this self-titled EP. In a sense, Kissing Cousins sound like “Horses”-era Patti Smith, mixed with a good serving of the Velvet Underground (when they still had Nico). It is during “Phone Call” that Kissing Cousins really get into something that more closely relates itself to punk music. However, this is…
Kissing Cousins start off their second EP with a very Spartan arrangement for their “Deadline”. The confident guitars of the track are reminiscent of a Johynny Cash track seen through the eyes of early nineties “ironic” country like Christopher Isaak. The second track is marked with a very industrial backdrop on their “Live Without You”. The vocals do not seem to mesh well with the very cold and mechanical sound…
Very few artists stick to their guns for twenty years. Keith Petty, mastermind behind Kirlian Aura, has done just that. Starting the act in 1988, a demo were released in 1991 and 2007 sees the release of this, arguably Kirlian Aura’s “magnum opus”. Twenty-three tracks adorn this album, which immediately rings warning bells in my head. As anyone that has experience movie soundtracks knows, it is tremendously hard to craft…
“Here’s The Plan” sounds as if Billy Joel dropped eir piano and decided to pick up a guitar. That is to say that Michael Weston King plays a classic brand of pop music that will have individuals singing along no matter their age or musical tastes. The opening track to “A New Kind of Loneliness” may be over five minutes but King is enough of a storyteller to keep individuals…
King Elementary start off “Kudzu” with “For the Birds”, a track that shows a tremendous amount of the band’s influence coming from the psychedelic sixties (the guitar solo present on the track sound a hell of a lot like “Break On Through”). Other tracks, like “Thief of Hearts” maintains this earlier influence but really allows Morgan’s vocals to look at bands like the Von Bondies and The Strokes for form…
It is very rare to get a chance to hear a musician that has been working on eir skills for 65 years; the resulting music on “Saw Mill Man” has a patience inherent in it that really shows this maturity. I would say that ey sounds like Johnny Cash, even though King is six years eir senior. There is little excess to this disc; every track essentially consists of King’s…