Articles in Album Reviews
Danger Mouse may have broken into the music game by using his production talent for the good of hip hop, but recent history tells listeners his skills are better used in the rock genre. His latest in a long line of collaboration albums, of which has spanned from The Black Keys to Cee Lo Green to Beck, is a tag team with veteran rock group Sparklehorse. While the album, titled Dark Night of the Soul, is billed as a collabora…
Currently the house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, The Roots started with only Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson back in 1987. After adding three other members and changing their name from The Square Roots they released their first album in 1993; seventeen years later, the band known for their funky, sophisticated brand of hip-hop has come out with their ninth album, “How I G…
Comprised of only two members – Tom Rowland and Ed Simmons – with six albums already under their belt, The Chemical Brothers have a pretty sturdy reputation for making quality, big beat electronic tracks. It’s safe to assume that their more recent music is held to a standard that the band set for themselves when they started consistently producing chart topping records. The pressure to improve exponen…
Veteran grunge rockers Stone Temple Pilots are back. On May 21st, STP released their self-titled 6th album and their first since 2001. The band has been rocking since 1992 and, upon first listen; you will see they have in no way compromised their sound in order to keep rocking until now.
After achieving commercial success with a solo album and two albums with rock supergroup Velvet Revolver, Scott Weiland comes bac…
Sleigh Bells a ringin’? More like screaming loud and clear. This hot new noise pop duo is surely attracting quite a lot of attention recently, especially after their album debut “Treats” was released June 1, 2010. There are eight songs on the album, each one being just as enchanting as the next.
Alexis Krauss’s petite, high- pitched voice matched with Derek Miller’s (ex member of Poison the Well) catchy and straight f…
Twenty years since releasing their last album and following the anticipated completion of a fan-involved album production process, the new-wave band Devo has come out with “Something for Everybody”. Having emerged from the shadows of their wildly popular tune “Whip It,” the now nearly sixty-year-old performers (in addition to the considerably younger drummer, Josh Freese of Nine Inch Nails and G…
The art of electric, dirty, folk blues is on the way in. Over the last 2+ years Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys have perfected the sound and been one of the lone carriers of the torch. Enter The Main Street Gospel from Columbus, Ohio. With their debut album hitting shelves June 29th, expect them to hit the ground running and take off with great momentum.
Love Will Have Her Revenge is a nice combination o…
The old adage is, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.” Well, in music this adage is changed to, “If you don’t have anything interesting to say, don’t say it at all.” Somebody should have relayed this message to Gym Class Heroes frontman Travie McCoy before he released his solo album, Lazarus, a couple of weeks ago.
The reason this album is such a let…
The indie rock supergroup, The Dead Weather, second album is Sea of Cowards, and was released in the US on May 11. Originally formed in Nashville, Tennessee, the band is composed of The White Stripes founder, Jack White, The Kills lead singer, Alison Mosshart, The Greenhornes bassist, Jack Lawrence, and the guitarist/keyboardist for The Waxwings and Queens of the Stone Age, Dean Fertita. The albums si…
When one has a “traditional” band comprised of two people, and only 4 hands, it is quite difficult to consistently produce quality songs. This proves even truer within the genre of blues-rock. The sound must be creatively cared for so as not to become repetitively thin, and/or dull to the ears-and-mind. The Black Keys are no novices to this particular challenge, and in their new album “Brothers” we find their 6th musi…
The Portland, Oregon based indie-folk band Blitzen Trapper has released their fifth album, Destroyer of the Void. This impressively eclectic and intelligently constructed compilation of songs straddles the decades with its heart buried in the soil of 1967 Monterey and its head wrapped in the chaos of the 2000’s.
Fleet Foxes’ harmonized, hymn-like songs immediately came to mind during the first song “Destroy…
