The Quitugs
PssssstArchive for Music Reviews
The Walkmen’s Heaven out on May 29th
I am a lazy bastard but now that school is out yadda yadda. Check this review out on the Dropp. I compared the Walkmen to the San Antonio Spurs because I must have been watching game 2 highlights while listening or something. Go Spurs! Now cop the new Walkmen album legally!* Read the rest of this entry »
Okkervil River’s I Am Very Far
Since the release of the Stage Names and the Stand Ins in 2007 and 2008 respectively, Austin, Texas rock band Okkervil River have been busy. For awhile former guitarist Jonathan Meiburg pulled double duty as a member of both Okkervil River and Shearwater. In 2010 the band produced and served as the backing band for Austin psychedelic rock pioneer Roky Erickson on his album True Love Cast Out All Evil. Lead singer Will Sheff was even nominated for a Grammy for his liner notes for the album. He then released, I Am Very Far: the Lyrics, a hard bound lyric book of prose designed as an introduction to the band’s latest release. The release in question is I Am Very Far, an album whose dark, chaotic forays are a departure from the sing-along shout fests of their previous works and in some paradoxical way shines through musically and lyrically. Read the rest of this entry »
Little Scream – The Golden Record
Featuring some airy, choir-like pipes, Little Scream’s Secretly Canadian debut, the Golden Record, effortlessly beckons the celestial, all while employing a range that’s equally gritty and full of some serious backbone. On one hand, she bates the listener’s ears with classical and lush piano and string arrangements. On the other hand, she’s pummeling ears with crunchy guitars. And while she employs a multitude of backing voices swollen reverb, do not be fooled into thinking it’s a crutch. Little Scream, aka Laurel Sprengelmeyer is the real deal. Read the rest of this entry »
Bibio – Mind Bokeh out on Warp Records
The Midlands producer and student of sonic arts, Bibio, returns with Mind Bokeh, an album whose namesake refers to photographic haze. And though the album is laden with its own musical haze, it is coupled with some very strong grooves, creating a very mobile experience for the listener at home, in a car, at a club. Read the rest of this entry »
Explosions in the Sky – Take Care, Take Care, Take Care
It’s tough to describe a particular song by the Austin, Texas post-rock band without saying pretty much the same things about any of their other songs. Their songs are appropriate for dramatic landscapes or emotional sports drama. Their sound puts the listener at a crossroads of pondering and peace. On a sonic level they contain enough reverb to fill a canyon and enough monstrous drumming to shake the rocks loose. It’s a sound they’ve perfected over 11 years. And despite a lack of overt deviation from this general sound, Explosions in the Sky have once again poured out something incredibly beautiful. Read the rest of this entry »
Explosions in the Sky – “Trembling Hands”
Fresh off the band’s Soundcloud, Explosions in the Sky present “Trembling Hands” from the upcoming Take Care, Take Care, Take Care. This cut shows the band is as thunderous as ever. The drums are popping off like a relentless succession of machine guns and the tremolo and delayed guitars are supremely vigorous. The entire song plays like a train of chaos rushing through with few breaks between sections, not even needing the typical build up/slow down/build up/explosion formula dominant in the most of the band’s palette. Hot damn.
Radiohead releases The King of Limbs
Radiohead released its eighth studio album, the King of Limbs on Friday, a day early from its original release date. Just clocking in over 30 minutes, the album very much retains the same brooding textures and odd Macbook wizardry that’s prevelant on a Thom Yorke solo release. Read the rest of this entry »
A Look Back At Some Fine Albums from the Year 2010
With the year 2010 gone it’s time to look back on the albums that stuck. I already lost count of the amount of vocoder, lo-fi, sun-baked, dub steppy chillness that was dropped this year. Something about Beiber getting ambient. If I was being completely honest I would include Purple Rain at every entry here. One entry for the amount of years in the past decade that the greatest soundtrack of all time has existed. Read the rest of this entry »
R. Stevie Moore
via maitaipistola
RSM has a discography whose amount of material is daunting, much like his insane grasp of piecing together a song.
Twin Shadow – Forget out now on 4AD and Terrible
Perfect layering of keys and horns, eerie electronic scratches, low and subdued vocals swelling to an empty street in a busy city; the music of Twin Shadow has a slow-seeping quality that magnifies in the stand-still time between clubbers coming home and people waking up for work. Avoiding melodrama and self-imposed New Wave implications of many bands in the past 10 years, George Lewis Jr. instead draws on a balance of subtlety and intensity to hook listeners. A shower of synthesizers, distant hand-claps popping off like buckshot, vocals rising to an amplified chorus before giving way to a brief calm; Lewis knows how to build drama perfectly, building up songs, turning the sound down and finally concluding with all-out electronic assaults. Forget plays like a cultural melting pot of 80s film and songs like “Boys of Summer” and is a guaranteed repeat listen anywhere. Read the rest of this entry »
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