Year: 2013
Review: Black Books – Self-Titled
Black Books write big songs confined to small places. There is an epic and anthemic quality to Black Book’s cloistered little pop songs: a driving, pulsing urge to express something too huge for words written in broad brush strokes of soaring choruses and the diffused light of atmospheric passages oozing out of guitars and synths that blend ambient colorings into vital, crunchy power chords. … read more
Review: Black Hearted Brother – Stars Are Our Home
After fronting the legendary shoegaze band Slowdive, and then moving on to the delicate folk on Mojave 3 and his own solo output, Neil Halstead has returned to the free-floating psychedelia of heavily affected guitars and synthesizers with his new band, Black Hearted Brother. … read more
Review: BL’AST! – BLOOD!
Dave Grohl. Is there anything he can’t do? He’s a well-known singer/songwriter, has “former Nirvana drummer” on his résumé, and now he’s resurrected the ’80s hardcore band BL’AST! by mixing a collection of unearthed tracks in their newly released album. … read more
Review: Blackout – We Are Here
While this may sound like a formula for your garden-variety sludge, Blackout spare no opportunity to reimagine the genre. Oh yeah, and don’t forget your bong. … read more
Review: Big Star – Playlist: The Very Best of Big...
In the latest catalog of the preeminent power pop group Big Star, Playlist outlines all the incarnations of this influential band. … read more
Review: Bill Callahan – Dream River
These songs are the kind of dreamlike reveries that can lull you into a drifting state that can carry you into dangerous territory, if that danger is sometimes just impending, around the corner. … read more
Review: Bipolaroid – Twin Language
I haven’t heard an album with this same perfection of vintage sound in a long time. Songs such as “Tonight We Paint the Town Our Favorite Colour” and “Efflorescent Adolescent” (plus basically every other song on the album) sound like they could be missing tracks from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. … read more
Review: Beat Radio – Hard Times, Go!
Thanks to the ADD-enriching convenience of Internet music applications, today’s pop music culture has become overly saturated with boorish indie musicians who think success is more contingent on who-you-know instead of what-you-know; opting for that over talent. This is why it’s such a delight to come across a no-nonsense diamond in the rough like Beat Radio. … read more
Review: Beat Mark
rance’s Beat Mark invoke the lazy, Brit-pop sound of the mid-80s with their debut album, Howls of Joy, 13 rushed tracks that leave much to be desired in the world of tone and song structure. … read more
Review: Be’Lakor – Of Breath and Bone
With the Gothenburg Swedish melodic death metal scene a shadow of what it once was, melodic death metal’s torch is being held by band outside the Swedish Circle, such as Be’Lakor from Australia. … read more