Album Reviews
Album review: Mike Lazarev – ‘Out Of Time’: a miniature soundtrack to an imaginary film
Mike’s a man out of step with chronos maybe, but not with the muse. As with Sonic Cathedral’s Cheval Sombre, who’s beautiful album in a very different discipline we looked at just last week, Mike seems to have time troubling his heart; its grinding linearity, its inexorability; the way it makes you miss things, yearn for things, regret. It’s a clever little record and a lovely one, too
Album Review: The Bats’ Robert Scott and Dallas Henley release low-fi home recorded delight ‘Level 4’
As the main songwriter for the wonderful The Bats, Robert Scott needs no introduction (read my recent interview with him). Scott has partnered with Dallas Henley, Scott’s co-owner of an Art Gallery – Pea Sea Art – in Port Chalmers Dunedin, to release a very low-fi and extremely intimate collection of absolutely gorgeous songs. Both …
Album Review: Melvins – Working With God
Rip-roaring return to form for West Coast sludge veterans on their 24th album.
Album Review: Roof Beams’ ‘This Life Must Be Long’ is a raw and graceful journey
Roof Beams have recorded an album ‘This Life Must Be Long’ filled with the most beautiful and expressive tracks. The instrumentation is delicate, the vocals raw and emotive, clever intelligent lyrics and themes and the production unfussy and raw. The band is showcases the songwriting skills of Nathan Robinson who writes of the travails of …
ALBUM REVIEW: Valley Maker – When The Day Leaves
An enjoyable, if a little lame, new album by the South Carolina songwriter
Album Review: nothing,nowhere. – Trauma Factory
Massachusetts-born rapper and singer Joe Mulherin (professionally known as nothing,nowhere.) opens a new chapter with Trauma Factory, his fourth studio album and second for Fueled by Ramen. This 15-song long outpouring of emotion is his deepest emotional venture to date. Battling ideas of pain, anxiety and heartbreak, Trauma Factory digs deep into the psyche of …
Album review: Mapstation – ‘My Frequencies, When We’: playful, immensely thoughtful tronica
My Frequencies, When We may not flaunt its wares with garish insouciance; but like so many of the albums that end up welded to your turntable, it keeps on enticing you back for more exploration, further interaction. It occasionally raises a grin and equally occasionally, an eyebrow; it’s varied in its approach yet thoroughly cohesive. It’s an immensely thoughtful record
Album review: A. Smyth unveils the imposing and beautiful album ‘Last Animals’
‘Lost Animals’ by Irish artist A. Smyth has an intriguing mix of acoustic and electronic instrumentation that creates a delicate fusion between a folk songwriting tradition and more rugged indie rock roots. The golden thread throughout, though, is an ear for the sweetest of melodies and an indelible melancholia that permeates every track. The result …
Album review: A Winged Victory For the Sullen – ‘Invisible Cities’: thrilling set pushes way beyond polite ambience
Invisible Cities is an intriguing and challenging accompaniment to a multimedia work of the same name. It’s also a cracking record in its own right, which is beautiful and textural and also genuinely thrilling in passages, and proves that A Winged Victory For the Sullen are not content to sit inside the pocket of modern composition and await their tribute; but wish to push onwards, much further onwards.
EP: Elle Músa’s gorgeous ‘sun, sun,sun’ is filled with dappled filtered sunshine and hints of melancholia
Brisbane’s Elle Músa has released an EP that literally sparkles and shines like the sun on the Queensland coast. A bucolic and sleepy air hangs over the EP – but it is far from soporific. Rather, there is a bleach-white brightness evoking lazy summer days in the turquoise-blue waters of the reef, there is a …