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…
While their promo kit is abound with the number of accomplishments that they have garnered in such a short period of time, I still don’t see Lifted as the type of band that really pushes the envelope in any way. Rather a band that would just go through the oft-traveled ruts of such bands as Delirious? and Audio Adrenaline, this type of rock is stale, innocuous, and truly trite. While…
The stop-start sound of A Life Once lost is more of a nod to the technical metal of Converge and the experimentation of early iterations of Korn. The super-sonic screaming present on tracks like “Needleman” remind listeners of a younger Jonathan Davis, albeit one who is backed by a little more meaty musical backdrop. The constant use of the double-bass during tracks like the aforementioned “Needleman” and “Vulture” really provide…
