I was skeptical, it’s true. When I read the initial press about famed indie-rock band Superchunk’s latest release, What a Time to Be Alive, proclaiming it was the band’s best album ever, or at the very least, in more than 20 years, I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow — “yeah, right. Here we go…”
Grrrl riot. No, but seriously. Grrrl riot. While I like the overall sound of Wild Flag, I can’t quite get past the notion that they are former members of other notable bands; most noteworthy, perhaps, Sleater-Kinney. So why couldn’t this just be a new Sleater-Kinney…
This is not a Bright Eyes record. Don’t believe the critics who tell you it is. Because it isn’t, not even close. There are things very specific to Bright Eyes recordings, beginning of course with guru producer Mike Mogis. He’s not here this time around, and it shows…
Southern California hipsters have been flogging the roots-rock idiom since at least the mid-’60s, when every third musician who rolled out of Laurel Canyon and onto the Sunset Strip had an acoustic guitar and a song to sing. The golden age of this stuff happened in the seventies…
I’ve had this record on rotation for weeks, mostly because I wanted to come up with something better than this: “Yeah, it’s okay, but it sounds a lot like the last record and not really in a surprisingly illuminating way or anything…
Departing partly (but not entirely) from previous breezy and sunny sounds of earlier albums Birds Make Good Neighbors and Make Out, The Rosebuds pleasantly surprise us…
You can sneer and the stick the ambient-noise CDs in the car stereo all you want, but it’s a fact: done right, nothing beats a good power-pop song. And with I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On, Silverlake/Echo Park popsters The Broken West…
I’ve been reading the 33 1/3 book on Bee Thousand, which — your reviewer says, realizing his age — was a Guided By Voices album that was a revelation to everybody back in 1994, albeit a more gradual one for me…
Everything about this record screams “Chapel Hill, North Carolina.” The patchwork-quilt cover, the humbledy-mumbledy singer, the outdated production (smells like the ’90s), the quite-unknown-guy who has accolades from hipsters…
Only listen to this record on a rainy, or at least overcast, day. Seriously: it doesn’t make sense when the sun is out. I’ve tried it, and the lyrical roundaboutness, the pretty but unremarkable musical backing…
As huge of a Superchunk fan as I am, I’ve never really jumped on the Portastatic bandwagon. (Obligatory explanatory digression: Portastatic is the side-project of Superchunk frontman Mac McCaughan. We now return you to the review, already in progress)…
A good indication of whether I like an album or not is whether I choose to listen to it outside of my reviewing duties. Many a reviewed album gets spun only a few times, then relegated to a pile that reminds you that “getting to keep what you review”…
Back in ’96, Merge Records had enough common sense to give a precocious young band called Spoon a chance. Marking the 10-year anniversary of Spoon’s debut, Merge is now re-releasing Telephono, re-mastered and packaged with the Soft Effects EP…
Have no fear: in spite of the nautical-sounding title, The Essex Green’s latest release, Cannibal Sea, comes nowhere near the piratical obsessions of, say, The Decemberists or The Coral. The press materials try to paint Cannibal Sea as some kind of chronicle…
You know how sometimes you think to yourself, “Man, I wish I could listen to something just a little Shins-y but not quite so upbeat. A little Smiths-y at the same time would really hit the spot”? Okay, nobody ever thinks that. But if you did, The Rosebuds would fit the bill perfectly…
