Emily Jane WhiteVictorian AmericaMilan With Victorian America Emily Jane White has produced the most conventionally beautiful album of 2010… and also likely the darkest. Little has changed since her 2007 debut, Dark Undercoat: her voice whispers, strings tremble, and listeners are left in a haze of delicately piercing melancholy. Her sound is indebted to the tortured heroines of music history. […]
The ClogsThe Creatures in the Garden of Lady WaltonBrassland The biggest accomplishment of The Creatures in the Garden of Lady Walton is the album’s astounding cohesion, despite being composed, recorded, and mixed over the course of five years and two continents. The collection, composed by Padma Newsome, manages to create ten songs that are both clearly individual works and pieces […]
Twin Tigers Gray Waves Old Flame Twin Tigers’ sound can only be described as Psychedelic Glam. On their debut LP, Gray Waves, the band’s debts shift seamlessly from Sonic Youth to Placebo. Their music is abrasively epic, while avoiding any rock clichés. They are sonically ambitious, but never the slightest bit pretentious. Unlike their modern psyche peers, Twin Tigers rarely […]
These New PuritansHiddenDomino Records While These New Puritans claim to be anti-avant garde, it all sounds like a bit of a surrealist joke when considering the elements found on their sophomore effort: beats inspired by Britney Spears, Japanese percussion, brass and woodwind ensembles, a children’s choir, and the smashing of a melon covered in cream crackers in order to simulate […]
30 years ago punk met camp (although probably not intentionally) in Ulli Lommel’s Blank Generation, the first melodrama to be able to boast Richard Hell as its leading man. Lommel had made a name for himself as part of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s troupe of “collaborators” and Hell had made a name for himself in a handful of NYC’s most significant […]
Telepathe@ Kung Fu NecktieFebruary 4, 2010 Telepathe’s sound can best be described as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as a Suicide tribute band. They are a pop group, but possibly the most avant-garde pop group in the world. They are a noise group, but possibly the most accessible noise group in the world. Their debut LP, Dance Mother (released last April), […]
David BowieA Reality TourISO Records The mention of double live albums have come to strike fear in the hearts of fans and critics alike when in regards to a classic artist who’s entering their sixth decade on the scene (or even their third). And when the word “retrospective” is thrown around, tensions only grow higher. Yet somehow the ineffably suave […]
