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
Let me preface this by saying that I did not go to this show in the best of spirits. I woke up at 7:30 on Tuesday morning with a “muscular” headache to a throttling jackhammer dismantling my sidewalk outside. Apparently the Albany OGS felt the bricks were getting a bit too uneven on the sidewalk. I’ll trip on them just the same. Tax dollars at work waking my ass up.
I committed the cardinal concert sin on the way to work and listened to the artist on the day of a live show: a bit of Easy Beat and Shame, Shame in the car. Work was busy as [fill in expletive] and I was forced to work through lunch in order to get out of there anytime close to 5 o’clock. Continue reading
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
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
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
First off, let me say that Northern Lights is and has always been a lackluster venue. When I was first seeing concerts there almost ten years ago, it was claustrophobic and the acoustics were shitty. Years later, the venue bought out the neighboring property, broke down a wall and now has twice the original square footage if not more. The acoustics are still usually shitty.
Secondly, midweek concerts drive me absolutely insane. It would be one thing if I lived in an actual metropolis, like say, New York City. Doors open at 9 on a Wednesday night in a satellite suburb of the God-knows-why capital of New York with three acts scheduled? I’m not happy that I’m a nine-to-fiver already; late, mid-week concerts are like a sack-tap from a chain mail glove.
Finally…February 29th. That wonderful day afforded to us only once every four years brought garbage weather. When I was leaving Albany Continue reading
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
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
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
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
the self-hating hipster 