Archive for the Reviews Category

« Older Entries

A Place to Bury Strangers’ ‘Rare and Deadly’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags on 04/09/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

It’s futile to source the origins of each song contained on Rare and Deadly, a collection of songs by A Place to Bury Strangers. Some are demos, some are B-sides, and others are incomplete tunes and sketches of songs that were never realized. What’s more important is that Rare and Deadly—unlike haphazardly assembled comps that are often released to fulfill an artist’s contractual obligation—captures the spirit of A Place to Bury Strangers in a way that is ingenious as the band itself. Read my full review on Treble.

Leave a comment »

Witch Ripper’s ‘Through the Hourglass’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags , on 04/07/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Witch Ripper’s kindred spirits – Mastodon, High on Fire and Baroness, to name a few – have done quite well for themselves thanks in part to keeping their creative juices flowing at practically all times. But by taking a slow-cooker approach instead, Seattle’s Witch Ripper have deftly avoided pitfalls like getting overexposed or even overplayed, and they’ve instead siphoned that time into developing a coherent and well-considered sound. Look no further than their new album, Through the Hourglass, which comes out Friday via Magnetic Eye Records. Read my full review via Veil of Sound.

Leave a comment »

Filth Is Eternal’s ‘Impossible World’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags on 04/07/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Vibrant, dexterous, and unrelentingly compelling, Seattle hardcore-punks Filth Is Eternal demonstrate on their newest album, Impossible World, that they’ve matured into a band adept at writing songs just two minutes in length. Read my full review courtesy of FLOOD.

Leave a comment »

José González’s ‘Against the Dying of the Light’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags , on 04/06/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

With his fifth album, Swedish songwriter José González considers his deepest of existential queries while maintaining the effervescent, seductive sound that’s the strongest through line in his career. Read my full review courtesy of FLOOD.

Leave a comment »

From the Vault: The Faint Take the Troubadour in Hollywood, 10.4.01

Posted in Concert Reviews, Reviews with tags , on 04/05/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

On a weeknight in West Hollywood, relative newcomers The Faint from Omaha, Nebraska, took the famed Troubadour by storm, inspiring the crowd to hop onstage and dance along with the band for their final number. It was, well, so not Hollywood for dozens of uninhibited souls to make the daring move and take concert interaction to the next level. And as tour attendance had faltered in the previous weeks following 9/11, even more delight was had in seeing the spectacle.

Read my full review, originally published in October 2001 in Campus Circle, here.

Leave a comment »

Gaupa’s ‘Fyr’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags on 03/03/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Gaupa’s Fyr is a masterwork of an EP that aims impossibly high and yet achieves a stratospheric stature rare for a short-player. Now, that may seem antithetical that it’s more difficult to craft an EP, given that they tend to be about half as long as their counterparts. Authors face a similar conundrum: can anyone who avidly reads literature claim with a straight face that there are more perfect short stories than there are novels? Of course not, and any argument to the contrary is effectively a denial of an objective truth. Read my full review of Gaupa’s Fyr on Veil of Sound.

Leave a comment »

Mirah’s ‘Dedication’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags , , , , , on 03/03/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Gently playful with a fire burning underneath, singer/songwriter Mirah’s first record in seven years signifies her devotion to the craft of making music, whether the light in her career is burning bright or dim. Read my full review on FLOOD.

Leave a comment »

Remember Sports’ ‘The Refrigerator’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags on 03/02/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Astute listeners, after hearing the entirety of this Remember Sports album, will realize they just heard 12 songs with 12 choruses; and that they weren’t subjected to anger, fear or really any ill feeling on The Refrigerator—just joy, thoughtfulness, happiness and reflection. Read my full review via Treble.

Leave a comment »

Cat Power’s ‘Redux (The Greatest 20th Anniversary)’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags , on 03/02/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Cat Power is the real deal, and she’s achieved what every artist should aspire to: letting their work speak for itself. Of course, Cat Power (a.k.a. Chan Marshall) isn’t the only artist playing in a league of artists who eschew placating the masses in favor of staying true to themselves, but what makes Cat Power so irresistibly charming is her lyrics, musicianship, live performances, and the cleverness that she lets linger below the surface. Redux (The Greatest 20th Anniversary) proves that theory to be correct. Read my full review of the compilation courteously of Post-Trash.

Leave a comment »

Two Cent Review: Colossal Rains’ ‘Feral Sorrow’

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags on 02/11/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

An offshoot of Blacklisted, Colossal Rains’ debut album embraces the joy of hardcore while dipping into something doomier with haunting production that eschews bright and clean sounds. Go to FLOOD to read my full review of Feral Sorrow.

Leave a comment »

« Older Entries