Frankie Rose: Interstellar
Frankie Rose, who the heavens do you think you are? Admirably, though stupidly, averse to the gravy train, you quit the Crystal Stilts and you abandoned the Girls Dum Dum and Vivian to record one of the best thin-air albums of 2010, Frankie Rose and the Outs. You then offered the only decent cover track, [...]
Prinzhorn Dance School: Clay Class
Prinzhorn Dance School‘s self-titled debut was one of those rare records that genuinely, and successfully, escaped critical dissection. Definable or vaguely describable, sure: it was minimalist, nostalgic post punk. But it defied nuanced explanations of potential importance or relevancy in the zeitgeist of 2007. Similar to MGMT’s Congratulations, Prinzhorn Dance School seemed to elude any [...]
Habitat: 01.21.2012
A good bit of natural uncertainty seems to surround new local trio Habitat, who for a time only played intermittently between each member’s full-time band schedule and who have yet to formally record even one original song for public consumption. Through most interpretations, the band is nothing more than a side project: guitarist Andrew Landry [...]
Cloud Nothings: Attack on Memory
When Dylan Baldi first became a presence on the radar of most listeners just over a year ago, he appeared to be yet another of the endless number of nostalgia-obsessed, Tumblrized indie musicians. Like most, he had something worthwhile, or at least relatively enjoyable, to toss in the zeitgeist: a record glossed with his own [...]
Cass McCombs: 01.17.2012
Though Alt-Country has exponentially grown in popularity over the last several decades, it has rarely seen artists capable of pushing its boundaries while remaining decidedly within them. Even the very avant leanings of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, generally regarded as the sub-genre’s creative apex, has been accused of representing more the preternatural evolution and singular [...]
Heat Dust: Heat Dust EP
Though this latest wave of genre-excavating indie music has yielded a rather admirable group of technically competent, revisionist garage rock bands, these musicians – much like any number of psychedelic, freak folk, electrofunk and lo-fi throwback artists – are creatively bound as much by the necessity of honing authentic onstage personas as they are by [...]
Lovey Dovies: 12.05.2011
In music circles, “hiatus” can be a really nasty term. More informative than the realization that a local band hasn’t played a gig in while but somehow also more discomforting that a formal breakup announcement, hiatuses would represent an awful purgatory if they didn’t usually imply much worse. Those of the “unofficial” kind often become [...]
Glish: Blast Off
Only seconds after the aerated opening notes of “Legs In Space” jounce from their speakers, it’s evident that Glish is attempting to breathe new life into an otherwise stale musical vista with a detailed attention to textural convention. Echoed, wiry lead guitars overlay a bouncy barely-there rhythm section, ghostly stargazer lyricism and cymbal-heavy drums that [...]
Cloud Control: Bliss Release
Australians have always seemed to run a strange horse in the race of the hipster-driven aughts. Though arguably having a heavy hand in shaping and defining modern indie pop with acts like Architecture in Helsinki, most Aussie bands since then – whether by systematic design or their own disinterest and ineptitude – have failed to [...]
