Brothertiger, Paradise Lost (Satanic Panic Records)
Honestly, I haven’t come this close to burning a promo CD for personal use in I don’t know how long (shut up, that’s how us old-time music critics roll, because we refuse to pay one red cent for streaming services, given that we literally Continue reading “Album Reviews 20/09/10”
Young, Planetary, Locations I Can’t Place (Hidden Home Records)
Sometimes when I’m wading through all the new promos, I picture myself like a wizened Gandalf, looking for a bright shiny band of hobbits who surprise me just enough to warrant stopping for an extra puff from my super-long pipe. These Continue reading “Album Reviews 20/09/03”
Rudresh Mahanthappa, Hero Trio (Whirlwind Recordings)
Jazz sax legend Charlie Parker is often referred to by his nickname “Bird,” which explains the title of this Princeton jazz director’s widely acclaimed 2015 album Bird Calls. If you’re familiar with Parker, you know he had the ability to dazzle with his Continue reading “Album Reviews 20/08/27”
The Killers, Imploding the Mirage (Island Records)
Um, wow, I never would have dreamed that we critics — at least the ones of us who just couldn’t quite place the wellspring from which Killers singer Brandon Flowers was drawing his hypnotic urgency — would have ever pegged him as some Continue reading “Album Reviews 20/08/20”
My Morning Jacket, The Waterfall II (ATO Records)
I tend to associate this Louisville band with their neighbors to their southern border, Tennessee’s Kings Of Leon, who’ve similarly carved a lucrative niche for themselves by tossing depleted-soil mystery-meat 1970s-rock into a blender, hipstering it up a little, and trying not Continue reading “Album Reviews 20/08/13”
Fantastic Negrito, Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? (Cooking Vinyl)
In a sense, Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz, a.k.a. Fantastic Negrito, reminds me of filmmaker Spike Lee, a Black man finding greatness in a white world. Like Lee, Negrito possesses an ultra-rare, universally accessible level of creativity that’s essential to getting his Continue reading “Album Reviews 20/08/06”
Boris, NO (self-released)
Already charter members of the cool kids club, the Japanese experimental bliss-metal trio are completely indie as of a year or so ago; this LP was released through the direct artist-to-consumer service Bandcamp. Not to get too inside-baseball with it, but that tells me they weren’t deliriously Continue reading “Album Reviews 20/07/30”
Limousine Beach, Stealin’ Wine + 2 (Tee Pee Records)
More than any other record company that sends me stuff, the Tee Pee imprint is the most like a box of chocolates, at least as far as the noisiness goes. They’ve released LPs from Warlocks, High on Fire and Brian Jonestown Continue reading “Album Reviews 20/07/02”
John Carpenter, “Skeleton”/”Unclean Spirit” (Sacred Bones Records)
It’s funny how things work out, isn’t it? I would have loved to hear the put-downs of Carpenter during the 1980s, mumbled during power-lunches with Hollywood executives, when they’d mercilessly tool on the musically untrained Carpenter’s insistence on soundtracking his movies (Halloween Continue reading “Album Reviews 20/07/23”
Jeff Cosgrove, History Gets Ahead of the Story (Grizzley Music)
This album is pretty niche indeed, combining a few things I tend to avoid (improvisational jazz, old-school classic organ, like, I mean right out of Lawrence Welk) with something I do appreciate regardless of setting, namely top-drawer musicianship. The story Continue reading “Album Reviews 20/07/16”
