REVIEW: LOCAL NATIVES – HUMMINGBIRD (2013)
Local Natives have just released their sophomore album, Hummingbird, and we couldn’t be more pleased. It’s been a few years since their debut Gorilla Manor, and the band has been through a lot since then. They parted ways with bassist Andy Hamm in 2011, and in the middle of writin
REVIEW: FRIGHTENED RABBIT – PEDESTRIAN VERSE (2013)
With songs entitled “Backyard Skulls,” “Late March, Death March,” and “Dead Now,” it seems evident that Frightened Rabbit still have some stark gloom left to share on their now fourth studio album, Pedestrian Verse. On their previous releases, including 2008’s breakout,&
REVIEW: BEING THERE – BREAKING AWAY (2013)
Everyone has those records that have the ability to transport them to certain moments in their lives when played. I call these records channel records. Breaking Away, the US debut album from London-based band Being There is a definite channel record. Breaking Away is 11 tracks
REVIEW: DROPKICK MURPHYS – SIGNED AND SEALED IN BLOOD (2013)
I planned on running some errands after writing a review for Dropkick Murphys’ Signed and Sealed in Blood. (Un)Fortunately, the whiskey breath oozing out of the record put me past 0.08%. A raucous collection of Irish-punk drinking songs for every occasion, the record celebrat
REVIEW: TRIXIE WHITLEY – FOURTH CORNER (2013)
Who is Trixie Whitley? The best five-minute introduction to the 25-year-old singer-songwriter is the studio video of her recording “I’d Rather Go Blind” with Black Dub (initially I assumed there was some relationship– a rendition, an ode, a homage– between Trixie W
REVIEW: RA RA RIOT – BETA LOVE (2013)
Ra Ra Riot’s debut album, “The Rhumb Line,” showcased an uncanny ability to transform frenetic, new-wave, baroque-funk grooves into an endlessly hormonal evening on the 3rd night of college, inexhaustibly expounding on fashionable existentialism in an effort to make out with the near-sigh
REVIEW: BELL GARDENS – FULL SUNDOWN ASSEMBLY (2013)
In any good story, change is essential, and for that change to occur there has to be some level of discovery. Either a discovery in oneself, the people around them, the world we all share, or collectively in all three as they’re often unavoidably intertwined. That discovery can be difficult or eas
REVIEW: ADAM GREEN & BINKI SHAPIRO – ADAM GREEN & BINKI SHAPIRO (2013)
Over roughly the last decade, Adam Green has released seven solo albums. He, however, is still best known for being one-half of the self-proclaimed anti-folk group, The Moldy Peaches. Green along with Kimya Dawson formed the New York group in the late 1990s and the band reached modera
REVIEW + INTERVIEW: ARIANE MOFFATT – MA/MA REMIX (2012)
After listening to her for over a decade, I found Ariane Moffatt‘s latest album incredibly brazen. Catching up with her in Paris, she was barely resting between shows on yet another French tour. While it’s been a real personal journey following an artist who has quietly come into her own, l