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…
There is no doubting the fact that Lansing-Dreiden begin their “The Dividing Island” off slowly. The very atmospheric opening tract finally gives way to a little pomp after a few minutes. There is a gambit made during this track as the song flops over the five and a half minute mark. The dreamy vocals that finally make their appearance halfway through the track further complete a Lansing-Dreiden specific sound, which…
Lanky has shifted eir general sound slightly to a more indie-rock type of feel, as the beginning of “Odd Hour Work Week”, specifically “Falling Hard For The Girl”, shows. The reedy flute comes into play during the second track, “Crashing The Car Is Learning To Drive”, which maintains a cool, detached sound even with the inclusion of this organic instrument. The differing sounds that struggle throughout “Crashing” really provide a…
