Category: Album Reviews

Album Covers, Album Reviews, Indie Rock, Post-Punk, Psych, Video

ALBUM REVIEW: Surf City | We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This

Three years after their debut album, Surf City return with another batch of songs that maintain the dense, opulent melodies and archetypal kiwi indie sonics but now built around a more confident compositional core. From the outset the band fall straight back into the deep end of their hooky, slacker vocal delivery with oohs and doo doos aplenty. Their songs are deceptively simple, based around … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Surf City | We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This

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Album Covers, Album Reviews, Audio Stream, Funk, Guitar Rock, Metal/Hard Rock

ALBUM REVIEW: The Ape | The Ape

Tex Perkins sure knows how to draw a gang of musicians together for each new band and project he convenes. From Beasts of Bourbon to The Cruel Sea, Tex, Don and Charlie to TNT, Perkins has always surrounded by some of the best players on the Australian rock scene and here, as The Ape, he’s joined forces with Raul Sanchez (Magic Dirt), Pat Bourke (Dallas … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: The Ape | The Ape

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Album Covers, Album Reviews, Audio Stream, Post-Punk, Soul

ALBUM REVIEW: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds | Live From KCRW

This is Cave and cohorts fourth live album, capturing them at in interesting junction in their career with Grinderman running its course, Push The Sky Away being the first album to not include founding member Mick Harvey and unlike some of its more varied predecessors it is for the most part considered and restrained in its delivery. Live from KCRW continues that mood, even when … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds | Live From KCRW

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Album Reviews, Experimental, Folk, Indie Rock

ALBUM REVIEW: Machine Translations | The Bright Door

J Walker returns with a new collection of dreamy and inventive songs that simultaneously serenade and gently challenge the listener. Ostensibly the solo project of J Walker, Machine Translations is now eight albums deep in a discography that has proven to be one overflowing with inventiveness, creativity and in many cases unassuming genius. Walker is one of those musicians who flies under the mainstream radar … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Machine Translations | The Bright Door

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Album Reviews, Indie Rock

ALBUM REVIEW: Cate Le Bon | Mug Museum

Le Bon’s third album finds her retreating/advancing from the warmth and intimacy of her earlier releases and taking her quirky voice into stranger and more experimental pop places with mixed results. Instrumentally her songs have for the most part been stripped back to guitar, bass drums and organ and repeatedly the art rock pillars of The Velvet Underground (the deconstructed guitar solo of Cuckoo Through … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Cate Le Bon | Mug Museum

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Album Covers, Album Reviews, Experimental, Guitar Rock, Indie Rock, Video

ALBUM REVIEW: Anna Calvi | One Breath

Anna Calvi’s debut album in 2011 marked her as a bold and confident songwriter that was matched by her exceptional voice and guitar playing. Two years later we have One Breath, a record that finds her retaining the dramatic and virtuosic elements of her music but also expanding its sonic scope by experimenting with new sounds and song structures. Eliza is an early standout with … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Anna Calvi | One Breath

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Album Covers, Album Reviews, Guitar Rock, Psych, Video

ALBUM REVIEW: The Grand Rapids | Great Shakes

The Grand Rapids’ debut album possesses a striking sense of purpose and confidence. This isn’t the skinny, frazzled-nerve psych rock that many contemporary acts trade in, this is muscular music; widescreen and bold. They employ many of the classic elements of drone and psych rock (effects, repetition and tumbling rhythms) but nothing sounds particularly generic, referencing all manner of rock from Jane’s Addiction to The … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: The Grand Rapids | Great Shakes

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Album Covers, Album Reviews, Audio Stream, Funk, Guitar Rock, Pop

ALBUM REVIEW: Paul McCartney | New

After more than half a century Paul McCartney is still pushing his songwriter’s pen, seemingly with a desire to prove his worth in each successive generation. The last few decades haven’t been his strongest yet New, surprisingly, is something of a return to the essence of the ex-Beatle in terms of strong, melodic, pop songs. Not everything works, particularly on the lyrical front where he … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Paul McCartney | New

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Album Covers, Album Reviews, Americana / Alt-Country, Folk, Guitar Rock, Psych

ALBUM REVIEW: Mazzy Star | Seasons of Your Day

Returning with their first album in seventeen years, it quickly becomes apparent that time doesn’t equate to change in the world of Mazzy Star. That is of course a good thing if you are fan of their earlier work as here they take those key elements of Hope Sandoval’s breathless, sensual voice and David Roback’s spacious, drifting musical canvases and wrap them around a batch … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Mazzy Star | Seasons of Your Day

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Album Reviews, Garage Rock, Indie Rock, Psych, Video

ALBUM REVIEW: The Ancients | Night Bus

The third album from Melbourne’s The Ancients is a record that hurtles, ambles and breezes by with equal amounts of intricate musicality and simple skewed-pop broad strokes. There is a wistful 60s folk tinge to songs like House of Cards, the lighter contrast to their more layered and dense psych excursions such as the shoegaze haze of Hamster and the epic Molokai that manages to … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: The Ancients | Night Bus

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Album Covers, Album Reviews, Guitar Rock, Psych, Video

ALBUM REVIEW: Pond | Hobo Rocket

Pond are and forever will be compared to Tame Impala, with whom they share a few members, and yes they both trade in retro-fitted psychedelic rock but dig below the surface and the two bands are clearly circling different planets. On Hobo Rocket they’ve pulled back on the overblown eccentricities  that were generally to their detriment and produced a concise, freewheeling and fun album. The … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Pond | Hobo Rocket

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Album Reviews, Americana / Alt-Country, Folk

ALBUM REVIEW: Bill Callahan | Dream River

On his exceptional new album, Bill Callahan (formerly Smog) has recorded his most peaceful and meditative set of songs. There is a bucolic, contemplative feel to the eight songs on offer as they weave across percussive landscapes, led by flutes and hypnotic guitars. Sonically the album is rooted in pastoral folk, much of it soaked in dub-heavy reverb and delay. The focus though is firmly … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Bill Callahan | Dream River

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