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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Denmark’s MØL hones their tantalizing blend of shoegaze and black metal on their third album, balancing heartfelt passages suitable for airplay with all-out assaults. Read my full review on FLOOD.
Largely eschewing their initial distortion-doused approach of their early material, Silversun Pickups reach for the stars on their dreamy seventh LP,LA rockers’ seventh record is a cohesive body of work rather than a gumball machine for singles. Read my full review courtesy of FLOOD.
The Bad Penny (beta) 