Album Reviews | the self-hating hipster

Archive | Album Reviews RSS feed for this section

Disappears – Pre Language

Chicago’s Disappears has been busy, busy. Three albums in three years: 2010’s Lux, 2011’s Guider and this year’s Pre Language. Disappears is admittedly not doing anything new. Their three albums reclaim late 60’s garage rock (the Velvet Underground aesthetic on Lux and the White Light, White Heat structure of Guider), early 70’s proto punk and Krautrock, late 70’s post punk (particularly The Fall and Wire) and early 90’s shoegaze. Their sound also incorporates elements of frontman Brian Case’s former band The Ponys.

Pre Language wasn’t exactly what I expected Continue reading →

Tags: Brian Case, Can, Disappears, Fear of Darkness, garage rock, Graeme Gibson, Guider, hipster, Iggy Pop, Kranky Records, Krautrock, Love Drug, Lux, Mark E. Smith, post punk, Pre Language, proto punk, Replicate, review, Revisiting, shoegaze, Sonic Youth, Steve Shelley, The Fall, The Ponys, Velvet Underground, White Light White Heat, Wire

The Shins – Port of Morrow

28 Mar

Port of Morrow is The Shins’ fourth album and the first on leading man James Mercer’s own label, Aural Apothecary, after satisfying their three-album Sub Pop quota. I gave numerous listens to their first two albums Oh, Inverted World and Chutes Too Narrow including but not limited to: Continue reading →

Tags: Aural Apothecary, Bait and Switch, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Chicago, Chutes Too Narrow, Crystal Skulls, Dave Hernandez, Echo & the Bunnymen, Fall of '82, For a Fool, Garden State, Girls, Greg Kurstin, hipster, indie, James Mercer, Jesse Sandoval, Jessica Dobson, Joe Plumber, Marty Crandall, Mercerites, Mine's Not a High Horse, Modest Mouse, Natalie Portman, Neal Langford, New Slang, New Wave, Now Way Down, Oh Inverted World, Port of Morrow, power pop, review, Richard Swift, September, Shinnists, Simple Song, Sub Pop, The Black Keys, The Rifle's Spiral, The Shins, Wincing the Night Away, Yuuki Matthews, Zach Braff

Comments 1 Comment
Categories Album Reviews
Author the self-hating hipster

Indie Canon Inductee: The Magnetic Fields

21 Mar

The Magnetic Fields was founded by Stephin Merritt in Boston in 1990 where he and bandmate/high school friend, Claudia Gonson, were living at the time (check out the adorable photo-booth still of the two above).

I might as well get this out of the way right now…Stephin Merritt is getting inducted into the Indie Canon for being the songwriter, lead vocalist, producer and mutli-instrumentalist behind The Magnetic Fields as well as Continue reading →

Tags: (Crazy For You) But Not That Crazy, 100000 Fireflies, 69 Love Songs, A Chicken With its Head Cut Off, Absolutely Cuckoo, Aging Spinsters, All My Little Words, All You Ever Do is Walk Away, bobdoes, Born On A Train, Busby Berkely Dreams, Candy, Claudia Gonson, Daniel Handler, Dean Wareham, Desert Island, Distant Plastic Trees, distortion, Epitaph For My Heart, Fear of Trains, Frank Zappa, Future Bible Heroes, gay synth, Heaven in a Black Leather Jacket, hipster, hipster girls, Holiday, i, I Can't Touch You Anymore, I Don't Believe in the Sun, I Don't Want to Get Over You, In the City in the Rain, Indie Canon, It's a Crime, Jeremy, Joanna Newsom, John Woo, Lemony Snicket, Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits, Lonely Highway, Long-Forgotten Fairytale, Lou Barlow, Love at the Bottom of the Sea, Love is Like Jazz, Mac McCaughan, Meaningless, Merge Records, Nico, Papa Was a Rodeo, Phil Spector, Promises of Eternity, Realism, Robert Scott, Sam Davol, San Diego Zoo, Series of Unfortunate Events, Shirley Simms, Stephin Merritt, Strange Powers, Suddenly There is a Tidal Wave, Susan Anway, Swinging London, synth pop, The 6ths, The Book of Love, The Charm of the Highway Strip, The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure, The Gothic Archies, The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side, The Magnetic Fields, The Night You Can't Remember, The Saddest Story Ever Told, The Wayward Bus, Town Hall NYC, triple album, Two Characters in Search of a Country Song, Very Funny, Wasps' Nests, When My Boy Walks Down the Street, When You Were My Baby, Yeah Oh Yeah!

Mouse on Mars – Parastrophics

12 Mar

The Düsseldorf based avant-garde, post-techno duo of Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma have been releasing music under the moniker Mouse on Mars for nigh two decades. 2012’s Parastrophics proves that Mouse on Mars, after six years of collective inactivity (there were a number of musical/production side projects in between), are sharp and still relevant.

Since 1994’s Vulvaland, Mouse on Mars has been an electronic chameleon of sorts. MoM collaborated with The Fall’s Mark E. Smith in 2007 as Von Südenfed which calls to mind John Peel’s famous description of The Fall: “They are always different, they are always the same.” The same could be said for Mouse on Mars whose latest album, Parastrophics, shows that St. Werner and Toma are Continue reading →

Tags: Andi Toma, Baku Hipster, Can, Chordblocker Cinnamon Toasted, Cologne, Cricket, Daft Punk, Düsseldorf, electronic, Eliot, facebook, hipster, house, IDM, Jan St. Werner, Kraftwerk, Krautrock, Mark E. Smith, Metrotopy, MoM, Mouse on Mars, Neu!, Parastrophics, Polaroyced, review, Seaqz, techno, The Fall, They Know Your Name, Vulvaland, Wienuss

The Magnetic Fields – Love at the Bottom of the Sea

9 Mar

I had been waiting for The Magnetic Fields to return to their sound on 1999’s 3-volume 69 Love Songs and with Love at the Bottom of the Sea thirteen years later they do just that…it’s just not nearly as good. After 69 Love Songs, The Magnetic Fields released i (which I liked to an extent), Distortion (which I was indifferent to and saw them just after the release of at NYC’s Town Hall venue) and Realism (which I didn’t like). i, Distortion and Realism departed from the synth-heavy pop of The Magnetic Fields’ pre-i works with Continue reading →

Tags: 69 Love Songs, Andrew in Drag, California Girls, distortion, Epitaph For My Heart, Goin' Back to the Country, hipster, Human League, i, Infatuation (With Your Gyration), Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits, Love at the Bottom of the Sea, Quick!, Realism, review, Shirley Simms, Stephin Merritt, synth, The Charm of the Highway, The Magnetic Fields, Town Hall, Weird Al Yankovic, Yeah Oh Yeah!, Your Girlfriend's Face

Comments 3 Comments
Categories Album Reviews
Author the self-hating hipster

Grimes – Visions

1 Mar

The Montreal native, Claire Boucher, released her third LP as Grimes this year on the ever-growing, do-no-wrong British label 4AD. Visions is Grimes’ most cohesive and impressive work to date and shows a limitless potential for the one-woman operation. In an interview with, um, Interview Magazine, Boucher dubs her work “post-internet” as opposed to limiting her sound to a genre or genres. “Post-internet” is a term that often pisses some [hipsters] off when they hear it assigned to something, much like the way the term “post-modern” (or even worse…”post-post-modern”) is like styrofoam rubbing against itself for me (does that sound make anybody else want to kill?); Boucher goes on to explain that Continue reading →

Tags: 4AD, Be a Body, Christina Aguilera, Clair Boucher, Colour of Moonlight, Depeche Mode, Disney soundtracks, Eight, Gang Gang Dance, Gary Numan, Grimes, hipster, Interview Magazine, Mariah Carey, Mulan, post-internet, review, Skin, Tubeway Army, Visions, Vowels = Space and Time, witch house

Comments 2 Comments
Categories Album Reviews
Author the self-hating hipster

Sleigh Bells – Reign of Terror

24 Feb

Sleigh Bells’ Treats is an album that got played over and over again at my last apartment. The first time that I heard the record, I couldn’t tell whether or not I liked it. A mixture of hip hop, lo-fi, drumline and stadium rock seemed a bit too kitschy…plus, I was too busy focusing on losing at pool which Sleigh Bells unfortunately became a soundtrack for. Then I heard the sample of Funkadelic’s “Can You Get to That?” on “Rill Rill.” I became just as hooked as all of my shilling friends (I listened to a lot of Maggot Brain in college). Sleigh Bells has a sound that is all their own on Treats.

Aside: I actually missed seeing them live in Albany on a weekend in 2010 that some friends and I went to see Belle & Sebastian Continue reading →

Tags: Alexis Krauss, Born to Lose, Bring it On, Can You Get to That, Crush, Derek Miller, Funkadelic, hipster, Leader of the Pack, M.I.A., metalcore, Never Say Die, Poison the Well, Reign of Terror, review, Rill Rill, Sleigh Bells, Straight A's, Treats, True Shred Guitar, You Lost Me

John Talabot – ƒIN

15 Feb

The album title and the artist’s last name (despite “John” vs. “Jean”) had me assuming an early 2000’s Parisian house sound. Barcelona’s John Talabot does incorporate elements of house in his debut, ƒIN, however it is far from sounding dated. The musical chronology is intentionally skewed with track titles like “Destiny” (implying future), “When the Past Was Present” and “So Will Be Now…” Talabot, like some of his other successful contemporary electronic genre-benders in Sepalcure and Gang Gang Dance, savvily blends deep house, world music, disco, funk, club and dub-steppy indie pop into one easy-to-swallow pill.

Talabot’s genre shape-shifting is polished with his attention to tracking so Continue reading →

Tags: Bonnaroo, Destiny, Estui, Gang Gang Dance, hipster, John Talabot, Oro y Sangre, Panda Bear, Parisian house, Pional, review, SBTRKT, Sepalcure, So Will Be Now, Talking Heads, Toro Y Moi, Twitter, ƒIN

Comments 1 Comment
Categories Album Reviews
Author the self-hating hipster

Dr. Dog – Be the Void

13 Feb

Dr. Dog is a band that has released average to above average LPs since their formation in 1999 with the exception of their hard to come by first release, Psychedelic Swamp, which I have deemed unlistenable after multiple tries (though I’m told that don’t have the complete album). Their seventh album released earlier this month, Be the Void, is entirely average.

Dr. Dog has always been a crafty late 60’s to mid 70’s pop/rock rehash outfit, but Be the Void finds them Continue reading →

Tags: Be the Void, Do the Trick, Dr. Dog, Easy Beat, hipster, How Long Must I Wait, Lonesome, Mott the Hoople, Northern Lights, Oh No, Over Here Over There, Psychadelic Swamp, review, Say Something, Scott McMicken, That Old Black Hole, The Band, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Toby Leaman, Warrior Man

Of Montreal – Paralytic Stalks

8 Feb

Of Montreal is a band that I sort of lost track of after 2007’s Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? From what I’ve heard of the three albums since then, Skeletal Lamping, False Priest and this year’s Paralytic Stalks, I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing.

I am a huge fan of some of Of Montreal’s earlier 2nd gen. Elephant 6 work: Cherry Peel, The Gay Parade, Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies and Aldhils Arboretum. My favorite Of Montreal album to date is Continue reading →

Tags: Aldhils Arboretum, Are You the Destroyer?, Cherry Peel, Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies, David Bowie, Elephant 6, False Priest, Heroes, hipster, Hissing Fauna, Kevin Barnes, Low, Of Montreal, Paralytic Stalks, psych pop, Satanic Panic in the Attic, Scary Monsters and Super Creeps, Skeletal Lamping, Spiteful Intervention, The Gay Parade, Ye Renew the Plaintiff