No matter how hard they try to hide in the purple haze of flower-child stage names and prog-rock positivity, Black Moth Super Rainbow are suddenly, obviously a sham. The quintet from Pittsburgh fooled listeners once on 2007’s Dandelion Gum, but made the mistake of trying to do it again on their latest LP, Eating Us. Read more…
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If you aspire to critique music, here’s a piece of advice: Never let your first listens to an album be on shuffle. Doing so threatens to undercut artists’ vision or story to be told, and misdirects both writer and reader. Without catching this particular faux pas early in the editorial process, the review you’re reading now of The Whigs’ new album In the Dark might have been vastly different. Read more…
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For a musical genre with such a short history (more like a persistent rumor, really), dubstep can already claim a few landmark releases. It’s a tainted claim, however, the same one that plagued drum’n'bass in the 1990s: Only one or two artists and titles rise above the fray (Skream, Burial’s Untrue) while most other big releases are compilations (5 Years of Hyperdub, Soundboy Punishments) pointing out the genre’s painful fragmentation of fame and talent. DJ/Rupture, however, manages to bridge the gap with the help of Matt Shadetek on the widely-sourced yet surprisingly focused Solar Life Raft mix. Read more…
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Nearly exploded into oblivion by the British Royal Navy after World War II, and eventually made habitable for birds and vacationers, Heligoland is an archipelago of two islands forming a distant province of Germany. Its odd, fragile history makes it a perfect namesake for the fifth studio album from electronic-music pioneers Massive Attack, the group and the music now as reclusive and insulated as the seven-year wait fans endured to hear it. (No, the Danny the Dog soundtrack doesn’t count.) Read more…
Posted in High Fidelity, Reviews
Your humble author first saw Mew on one of those corporate-sponsored, throw-any-three-bands-together tours which are all the rage nowadays, as the Danish trio supported their fourth album And the Glass Handed Kites. Immersed in kaleidoscopic projections as swirling as their music, one wondered if this was what it was like to watch a young Pink Floyd figure out how to give it their all. That night may not have been overpowering evidence of Mew’s presence—stealing stage thunder from Kasabian, as they did, is no struggle—but their newest album should provide them with an infusion of fresh interest. Read more…
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British bedroom electro producer Kieran Hebdan has jazz hands. That’s not to say that you’ll see him doing a Bob Fosse shimmy anytime soon; rather, jazz pours from his hands, making magic from the phalanx of samplers, sequencers, and synths at his fingertips. Point: The loops and grooves on his sixth studio release as Four Tet, There is Love in You, make only limited creative progress. Counterpoint: Sometimes, it’s OK to preach to the converted. Read more…
Posted in High Fidelity, Reviews
When it comes to musical acts who cashed in a bunch of indie credibility in the 2000s, few had to endure as many demands for rebates as Vampire Weekend. The Columbia University quartet spent a bunch of time and column inches defending their self-titled debut’s peppy, preppy pop and its references to (and some would say rote copying of ) Graceland-era Paul Simon. Hopefully, their new album Contra will settle once and for all any controversy surrounding their musicianship. Read more…
Posted in High Fidelity, Reviews
The Cobain-Love-Grohl-Novoselic nexus and the Sub Pop coffers, like most established music sources here in the era of “what, me pay for music?”, need constant and repeated feeding. A revisitation of the once-ignored first chapter in the Nirvana saga allows for that and, thankfully, so much more. Read more…
Despite working primarily in the niche of industrial music, Martin Atkins remains a conduit for collaboration like the Dave Grohls and Kanye Wests of the world. Recent significant offers of musical help resulted in Atkins’ evangelism for and production of underground Chinese rock, as well as ongoing efforts to educate bands on surviving a DIY lifestyle. But when the musicians turn the tables and help him out—yep, must be time for a new Pigface album. Read more…
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Earlier today we reported that Karin Dreijer-Andersson would reissue the debut album from her solo project Fever Ray with special packaging and extra material including remixes, videos, and a live performance. The website for Britain’s Guardian newspaper is in fact offering MP3 files from that show—a March 2009 concert from Lulea, Sweden—as a free download now through midnight Monday, October 26. Click here to get it.
Posted in News
