Year: 2013
Local Reviews: Patter Stats
Listen to this album with headphones. Listen to every album with headphones, for that matter. The two guitars harmonize through stereo and you probably won’t notice unless you are plugged in. What is this Beast? Well, this beast balances energy and harmony in a way that not many albums do. … read more
Local Reviews: Shark Speed
While the pace of most the songs on Shark Speed’s second release, Education EP, have a pace and tonal energy similar to that of the majority of the songs on VH1’s top 20 countdown there is a style about them that gives them an organic genuine vibe. … read more
Local Reviews: Small Town Sinners
Small Town Sinners aren’t what you would expect from a local alt country band. Each one of their songs seems to slightly pull at your heart strings and randomly sneak back into your brain when you least expect it. … read more
Local Reviews: Terry Lynn Tschaekofske
Illusions makes me tense. Rather than relaxing to the sounds of a simple guitar, I find myself on edge, waiting for a theme to develop into something compelling. Each song inflicts dutiful repetition, at around 80 beats per minute, with some reverb. … read more
Local Reviews: Uni.Verse.All. & Roe
As much as I dislike the whole outerspace trend going on in hip hop, Eat & Run is not half bad. Made up of U.n.i.verse.all and Roe, two local SLC cats, my only real issue with the album is how it doesn’t sound the least bit like two 15-year-old white kids. From the sound of the voice to the rhymes, the only thing sounding age appropriate is the space-man beats they rhyme over. … read more
Local Reviews: The Hung Ups
Dripping sexual frustration as teenage pop-punk is prone to do, there’s no more to Red Rocket than twelve songs about girlfriends, pizza and alcoholism. The songs blast through with such haphazard high energy that they are almost indistinguishable. … read more
Local Reviews: I Hear Sirens
E. H. Gombrich said, “To talk cleverly of art is not difficult, because the words critics use have been employed in so many different contexts that they have lost all precision.” So is writing a review about a post-rock record. … read more
Local Reviews: Invdrs
The only things you really need to know about the Invdrs’ Electric Church is it makes you feel alive yet doomed, and you need to own this album. With drum hits that sound like bones snapping and popping under the immense weight of the distortion-maximized guitar and bass, you will welcome this sonic atrocity to melody. … read more
Local Reviews: J.P.Whipple
I popped this bad boy in on the way to/through southern Utah recently. It’s sometimes folk-country music made for great road trip music, mixing with the increasingly redder rocks—and the “Mexican” elements of the music manifested what it might be like taking the same trail down to Las Vegas a-carousing back when honky settlers were exploring the southern deserts of this country. … read more
Local Reviews: Mindstate
It’s got some soul to it. The Black Lungs EP has some character to it as well. Normally the self-loathing game can get a little played, but Dusk One does it and sells it with a proper delivery. Opening with a soulful Shawshank-Redemption beat you get a solid idea of what you’re in for, solid beats and meaning. … read more