It took me a few listens, I’ll admit it, to get Year Of The Witch, California band RACES’ debut full-length. The first time I threw it on, I mostly shrugged and said, “Next!,” putting something else on after barely a song and a half…
Of all the bands I’ve run across in the past year, few have made as huge an impression as Brooklynites Freelance Whales. I went into the band’s debut album, Weathervanes, totally blind, expecting throwaway Pitchfork-friendly pop…
Up until a few years ago, I was turned off by the recent slew of indie-rock heroes. The Bon Ivers, Beiruts, and Vampire Weekends were a little too ethereal and a little too dainty for my taste. They seemed to lack the creativity and, frankly, the balls to do anything interesting. I wanted my mind blown with incomprehensible, abrasive instrumentation and dark, obtuse lyrics…
It’s funny, but until I heard Freelance Whales’ Weathervanes, it’d never really occurred to me how much influence Ben Gibbard’s had on music; I mean, the guy’s an icon, these days, both for Death Cab and The Postal Service, but all of a sudden I’m seeing threads connecting folks like Freelance Whales…
I hope that when it’s my time to die, the new Dodos album will be playing in the background for my last 45 minutes. The indie group released its fourth album, Time To Die, on September 15, and I like it a lot…
The Antlers’ ambient and elegiac debut, Hospice, has generated a veritable buzz from indie sites and bloggers alike since its online release in late June. For the most part, it’s been received well — some even going as far to say that Hospice is the best album released in 2009 so far…
Sweet Jesus. I’m having a real hard time digesting the fact that Quantum Fucking is now officially the Fatal Flying Guilloteens’ tenth release. I was almost positive the ground would open up and swallow the band whole before the universe would allow that much Guilloteens-ness to exist…
