As we’ve come to expect in recent years, LA’s FYF Fest has announced it’s 2013 lineup and it’s a doozy. This year’s installment features a slew of modern alternative and indie rock from today and yesteryear. Headlining on night one are Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio and Flag (the supergroup of ex-Black Flag members Chuck Dukowski, Keith Morris and Bill Stevenson performing Black Flag songs). Night two features the first U.S. performance of My Bloody Valentine since their slot at Coachella 2009. Joining them at the top of the bill are MGMT (who have been strangely quiet lately), Beach House, Solange, Yo La Tengo and mxdwn favorites, The Melvins.
Read more…
Looking for Trouble
in All the Right Places
Trouble Will Find Me hearkens back to High Violet, The National’s 2010 album, where perpetually brooding frontman Matt Berninger tells us in his distinctive rumbling baritone, “Sorrow found me when I was young.” And from The National’s extensive discography, it’s easy to understand the band’s long, unraveling history and the various troubles that have always dogged their steps, from their self-titled debut in 2001 (think “29 Years”) to the depressive paranoia of High Violet’s “Afraid of Everyone.” On Trouble, the band’s sixth studio album, the quintet dives deeper into a dense morass of meditative worrying and subdued gloom, and it’s just as wonderfully somber as anyone could wish.
Read more…
Now I Am Become Death
Showy surf rock combo Man or Astro-man? makes their dust-clearing return from an over 10-year furlough with DEFCON 5…4…3…2…1. In case you’re not hip to the band’s Atomic Age aesthetic—or their riotous, space-schlock stage presence—if the album’s clamped-down title happens to volley a salvo of early-NASA and Cold War images through your head, consider yourself clued in.
Read more…
I Opened Up My Eyes…
It only makes sense that a band called Pure X would produce dreamy rock-noise-pop music. After a hellish year of physical injuries, long breakups and long-distance communication amongst band members, the three-piece from Austin display a smarter, crisper sound in their full-length sophomore album, Crawling Up The Stairs. They’ve dropped most (but not all) of the fuzz and reverb from their lo-fi debut album, and added more keys, synth, and overall diversity of sound to the second.
Read more…
Can’t Beat Daft Punk
House music superstars Daft Punk are back with another album. Random Access Memories, released on Columbia, is the French duo’s fourth studio album since 1997 and the first one since 2005’s Human After All. Daft Punk began writing the album in 2008 as they were working on the film Tron: Legacy without specifying release dates– but now, five years later, the time has finally come. The album draws on ’80s pop music and contains thirteen tracks ready to be devoured by fans of all types. So: how does the album hold up under the keen ear of review? Pretty damn well, actually.
Read more…
