REVIEW: MADJO – EP (2009)
This originally appeared in the fall issue of The Journal of a Musician, run by George Lepauw, a world-renown classical pianist in Chicago. A renaissance man when it comes to music, the Journal seeks to provide remarkable insight into culture and music. I still am humbled to have been asked to
REVIEW: TITLE TRACKS – LONG DREAM (2016)
John Davis isn’t going anywhere. Debuting in 1998, Davis and his DC dance-punk trio Q And Not U explored the spastic, synthy, sweaty sound that seemed all the rage around the millennial year, quietly disbanding seven years later. Georgie James, Davis’ charming indie pop duo with Laura Berhann, d
REVIEW: THE RADIO DEPT. – RUNNING OUT OF LOVE (2016)
Somewhere at a private table in a swank nightclub in Stockholm, a cadre of beautifully Swedish leftists debate the Nordic Model and Swedish socialist party politics while listening to uber-sexy dance music at 128 beats per minute. If not in reality, that is the world created by The Radio Dept.’s l
REVIEW: HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER – HEART LIKE A LEVEE (2016)
Throughout Heart Like a Levee, the latest record from criminally under-the-radar Hiss Golden Messenger, frontman M.C. Taylor fights with himself. As a working musicians who has flirted with commercial success, Taylor preaches the struggle of finding a balance between family life with kids back
REVIEW: TOUCHÉ AMORÉ – STAGE FOUR (2016)
The death of a parent. A “rite of passage” as described by Touché Amoré frontman Jeremy Bolm on “Posing Holy,” off the band’s new full length, Stage Four. An “initiation conducted by bedside.” On their fourth full-length, the Southern California quintet tackle the most personal
REVIEW: ANGEL OLSEN – MY WOMAN (2016)
Angel Olsen has repeatedly said, in interviews and official press release, that she doesn’t want My Woman to read like a feminist manifesto, all the while acknowledging that the themes therein deal with the “complicated mess of being a woman.” Manifesto or no, My Woman is a
REVIEW: THE ALBUM LEAF – BETWEEN WAVES (2016)
Over the course of seventeen years, The Album Leaf has evolved from the introspective, studio-based explorations of former Tristeza and The Locust member Jimmy LaValle, into a focused live quartet. Between Waves, the band’s latest and first with Relapse Records (the metallic home to bands lik
REVIEW: RUSSIAN CIRCLES – GUIDANCE (2016)
Russian Circles enter their second decade fully confident in what it is they do. Guidance shows a band “at the top of their game” as they say, expertly crafting instrumental post-rock full of endless creativity, equal parts aggressive and ethereal, rich with requisite tension and
REVIEW: TY SEGALL – EMOTIONAL MUGGER (2016)
Ty Segall has had another beautiful baby in album form – this time without a mommy, apparently. An abrasively noisey baby with a lot to say, Emotional Mugger is possibly the most unique of Segall’s releases to date. While it may lack the accessibility seen in