Reviews

On a second album before finishing high school, this precocious Nova Scotian holds little back. Her vocal style is free-range, in the manner of a young Van Morrison. Following a couple of exuberant opening numbers, “Amsterdam” is soothed by Ruth Minnikin’s accordion. Thomason’s lovely voice is allowed to soar, warble and moan in a nurturing […]

With each release, these Manhattan experimentalists become more confident and continue to crystallize their disparate influences; Eye Contact, their fifth album, is no exception. The album opens with a voice saying “I can hear everything, it’s everything time” which is the perfect descriptor for the blissful psychedelia that follows. From its beginnings as an edgy, […]

With the smooth sounds of ’90s R&B and rap coming back in style, it’s the perfect time for west coast veteran DJ Quik to make his return. His first album in six years, The Book Of David sounds as if it’s been laying dormant in a time capsule since his heyday in the mid-’90s. Full […]

One of the great things about opening a Chad VanGaalen record is that you never know what to expect. You might hope for tracks like “Wandering Spirits” or “No Panic/No Heart”—two melancholic acoustic songs that strive to render the lonely comfortable—but his real knack is making “anything goes” feel truly remarkable. So it is with […]

If there were a chart for being popular in the UK and non-entities in North America, the Welsh band Super Furry Animals might be number one. Frontman Gruff Rhys steps out, leaving SFA’s rock conventions behind and bringing his vintage keyboards like the Moog and Korg, ideal for injecting serendipity into sweet pop. The compositions […]

After releasing its self-titled debut in 2008, Friendly Fires burst onto the UK music scene and became one of the hottest groups in England with its blend of house, electronica and funk infused rock music. But across the pond, the group is relatively unknown. This will change with the highly infectious sophomore, Pala. The album’s […]

Award-winning Canadian hardcore band makes a rock opera about young love, a lightbulb factory and British political angst, full of rhyming couplets that would make even Shakespeare blush. On paper, David Comes to Life sounds ridiculous. On the record, it’s…well…still ridiculous, but also captivating, impassioned and, at its best, exhilarating. Frontman Damian Abraham’s growl remains […]

Okkervil River follows up its past two fame-themed albums with I Am Very Far, a record still lingering on the rock-and movie-star themes. The album opens with two tracks that sound flat and out of place—lacking the hooks that launch listeners into earlier albums. It’s not until track three that frontman Will Sheff ups the […]

Ben Gibbard now lives in Los Angeles, a town he’s decried numerous times (“Why You’d Want to Live Here,” Postal Service’s “This Place is a Prison”), so it’s probably no coincidence that the first single, “You Are a Tourist,” and the lead track, “Home is a Fire,” discuss an uneasy sense of place. But those […]

Kestrels’ Chad Peck’s new solo side project We Need Secrets, is—as the title implies—an intimate and musically contemplative affair, while still being about the love of what a guitar can become. Especially the closer “He Do the Police in Different Voices” which is 25 minutes of drone and echo musique actuelle best suited for rainy […]

In some ways Katie Stelmanis’ music hasn’t changed much from her solo project, but with a shift in image and more understated synthesizers, she’s suddenly poised to take over the world. The more mysterious-sounding Austra (“dawn” in Latvian) works Stelmanis’ solo material into something more developed. Feel it Break is an elegantly crafted darkwave album. […]