Year: 2013
Local Reviews: YYBS
Park City kids YYBS (Young Yet Brilliant Sleuths) cover a range of styles over the course of this four-song EP—going from alt-country picking to aught indie yelping in seconds—yet manages to never sound contrived. … read more
Local Reviews: OK Ikumi
Local musician OK Ikumi’s new album made me escape into a world of melancholy colors and whimsical melodies. Simple but hypnotizing drum patterns, teasing synths and eerie but friendly samples gave the album a strong, reposed vibe. … read more
Local Reviews: Pretty Worms
Side “Acid” takes punk beats and droning bass grooves and combines them with electronic noise and glitched-out mechanical melodies. Pretty Worms play a style of noise rock that is pretty unusual at first listen, but if you give it some time, the incoherent vocal loops and seemingly random atonal synthesizers might begin to make sense. … read more
Local Reviews: Pretty Worms/Blackhole
“Killers Galore” is a ride through noise punk hell on a groovy bass and a light, punchy drum rhythm. Punctuated with sound clips of sirens and yelling, part of the song’s appeal is the sublime strangeness with which they approach a very basic song. … read more
Local Reviews: Pretty Worms/Plastic Furs
With “Comet Tail,” you can hear Trisha McBride’s vocals a little more clearly in the mix of bright bass and thick sonic distortion, and her ranting drone is an excellent fit for Pretty Worms. It’s a little slower and much less noisy than their other material, but as a stand-alone track, it rocks with the best of them. While the familiar, yet still unsettling vocal loops play on, the drums keep a snappy, danceable beat. … read more
Local Reviews: The Beginning At Last
The Beginning At Last are a quartet who combine the basic musical styles of metal and hip hop. The resulting sound on No Music No Life is pretty much what one would expect: scratching vinyl over trilling distortion and synth lead over bellowing shouts. … read more
Local Reviews: American Hitmen
Listening to American Hitmen is like jumping into a Hot Tub Time Machine. Instead of going all the way back to the ’80s, this time travel adventure sends you back to the early ’90s when rock bands still had all the flash and machismo of spandex-rocking ’80s metal bands, but were also starting to embrace a little bit of a dark, moody, creative side. … read more
Local Reviews: Chainwhip
The Salt Lake punk scene’s own Critter fronts Chainwhip with his screechy vocal assault, accompanying a cacophonous mix of thrash and crusty hardcore. As with most demos from a local hardcore band, the lo-fi recording quality stands out at first, but only becomes more and more charming and appropriate as the release claws along. … read more
Local Reviews: Daisy & The Moonshines
This band has three things that make them dangerously worthwhile: class, soul and groove. It would be difficult to listen to their music and not feel engaged in some way or another—whether it be to the visceral, bluesy feel (such as in the song “50’s Kill Off!”) or the genuine lyrics that thread the album together. … read more
Local Reviews: Max Pain and the Groovies
Tortilla Gold, the latest release from the Groovies, is seven tracks of jangling, bluesy rock n’ roll. This band plays a great live show, always getting the crowd thrashing around. Fast rockers such as “Electro Cosmic Chronic Jam” and “Doin Time” capture that energy, while the slow groove of “Piano” and “Good Olds Blues” show a more melodic, tightened-up side of the band. … read more