Year: 2013
Review: The Rebel Set – How To Make a Monster
The ultra-quick single-string picking that opens How To Make A Monster drowns in wet reverb the way The Ventures did it. … read more
Review: The Growlers – Hung at Heart
The Growlers = Not in the Face + Allah-Las + Beach Boys … read more
Review: The Cannanes – Small Batch
The Cannanes = Jem + Honeybunch … read more
Review: The Cave Singers – Naomi
The Cave Singers = Deer Tick + Delta Spirit … read more
Review: The Catbirds – Catbirds Say Yeah
Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh here, but I dreaded reviewing this album. Southern rock doesn’t have to be an homage to the dying art. I felt like I was overhearing a TV in the adjacent room playing one of those awkward Time-Life Singers and Songwriters commercials, but they were introducing a strange, assorted collection of ’70s and ’90s rock. … read more
Review: The Chapin Sisters – A Date With the Everly...
What began as a labor of love for the Chapin Sisters has become a terrific installment to their catalogue, and even though the entire record is made up of Everly Brothers tunes, its almost as if the record is a collaboration of the two groups. … read more
Review: The Haxan Cloak – Excavation
Throughout Excavation, Bobby Krlic makes incredible use of his background in sound design. … read more
Review: The Brains – The Monster Within
Psychobilly has an inherent problem in that the genre is a formula. Punk mixed with rockabilly decorated with horror imagery. Now by the time most bands have achieved those three elements they don’t seem to look beyond them, and that’s where the genre has become stagnant. Very few bands have been able to break the mold like The Brains. These Canadian psychos play at break neck speeds, but in some unholy way are still able to keep their songs highly melodic. … read more
Review: The Hussy – Way With Words
The same rushed, distorted drumbeat for the EP’s short entirety might be too much without the simple and upbeat melodies played on a cheap-sounding keyboard or Catatonic Youth–style echoed noises—laser beams maybe? … read more
Review: The Builders and the Butchers – Western Medicine
The Builders and the Butchers channel a dustbowl-era feeling in this itinerant carousal of the post-apocalyptic West. … read more