Album Reviews

White Lies' album Ritual dominated my headphones for a good four months a few years ago. It was huge and emotional and serious and so fucking easy to get stuck in my head and in turn, it got stuck in my stereo for what felt like the entire year of 2011. I owe White Lies for renewing my love of the big bands. The bands that you didn't just listen to, but the bands you googled to see pictures of, read more about, watch live video clips of shows in far off lands, find out what their favorite foods were and then practice cooking those foods so if you ran into each other randomly you could kidnap them and feed them and they wouldn't try and run away as fast as if you didn't know how to make just the most stunning mushroom risotto. I hadn't had this sort of fascination with a group of...

There are very few instances over the past year where I've put something on without knowing who it was and I end up listening to it all the way through and then again and again and again. I did that exact shit with the new EP from Kauf, titled As Much Again. Seriously, I put it on at 5:45am while making breffast for the wifepiece, and by 5:45pm when leaving the day job I had listened to the four songs close to eleven times already. To admit something was perfect so soon into hearing it was a bit presumptuous of course, but how often do we find ourselves inside of a situation and are already declaring it to be the "best" whatever the Fuck it is? I remember standing in the middle of some of my friends a few months ago at a Sigur Ros show and saying to no one in particular that it...

I love the way YC The Cynic puts words together, the way he uses his phrasing to slowly build a 3D image, layer after layer until you have this towering feat of architectural engineering. It seems to defy gravity. I often picture his rhymes like a game of Tetris. Perfect geometrical pieces falling into place and building at a fevered pace, you are wondering how much longer you can sustain and keep up, then that perfect fucking column drops bringing it all together and getting you max points. I get giddy when I hear this asshole’s rhyme schemes. It's quite impressive. With GNK, YC The Cynic enters the conversation with the likes of Homeboy Sandman, Earl, and Milo as the most promising up-and-comers. GNK is his submission for entry to this rarefied club and if I have to...

Go down and hit play on "Bad Kingdom". Back with another one of those block rockin' beats? YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. What the Fuck sort of world did I just walk into? REARAREARAERARARAEARAAREAER BOHM TAH TAH BOOM TAH. It's songs like these that attach me to bands, where they can drop an entirely shitty album with the exception the one song, and I would still pay to see them in concert. Fortunately I don't have to rely on a single track to have more than one reason to love the fucking fuck out of a band when it comes to Moderat. Now, regardless of who they are individually (PR companies are trying to get me to read words about who is doing what with who, and all I wanna know is DOES THIS SHIKIBBLE ROCKCOCK? I don't care who, just give me the mmmmmhmmmmmm), this album is so comfortably...

Because of the popularity for our conversational format we debuted a couple of weeks ago with fIN's album Wasted on the Living, we thought that we'd give the format another shot. Tom and Joel sat down to talk about Har Mar Superstar's throwback album Bye Bye 17. Overall Joel rated this as a 7 and Tom gave this sensual man-beast 9 starsies. We settled on 8. Enjoy. Tom: You know I'm OCD about categorizing my music. And I get pissed that R&B is not separated into sub genres. This album sounds more like the retro Phil-Spector era R&B: Big production, Sha-la-la;s, and big hooks. How did we go from there to a sound that makes me want to lube up and grind all the curvy furniture in my house? Joel: I didn't know what I was getting into when I first heard the song Prisoner dude. You're...

Ever put in an album and within fifteen seconds of the first track you're already telling yourself "this band is going to be the death of me for the foreseeable future"? Ever put in an album every morning for two weeks straight and say the same thing over and over without even realizing you're listening to the same band you already told yourself you were going to love the balls off and you know all the lyrics already and your kids sing the LAH DAH-DAH DAAAH DAH-DAH, LAH DAH DAH-DAH part on cue without asking them to? Me Like Bees bro. How fucking fitting is this then brosephs? I'm a beekeeper with many many bees, this band is called Me Like Bees. Me Like Bees is a tshirt I would wear unironically, but alas, it is ironic that I also want to adopt all of these hairy children and make them...

I don't hide my affinity for instrumental music. So often I fall in love with a band or producer and the second the vocals hit I'm pissed. WHY WOULD YOU RUIN YOUR AWESOME BY OPENING YOUR MOUTH HOLE? Instrumental music has kept me sane over the past fifteen or so years by allowing me to paint my own picture of what is being described with instrumentation, samples, rhythm and the occasional wicky wicky. Instrumental hip hop is my choosing the book over the movie. I prefer my own interpretation of anything over 80% of the time, and the same is true for amazing instrumental music. If it's sans vocals, I will gravitate towards that more often than not. Let me write my own story, feel my own feels, don't describe what only I can describe because as much as I ain't in your chaclas, you ain't in...

A couple days ago, around 10 am, my wife was packing a bag to go see some friends, asked me what I was going to do with my day, to which I had no reply. Staring at her phone, she then asked if I’ve “heard of lord.” “You mean Jesus Christ my personal lord an-” “No, some chick named Lorde, singer.” “Lorde with an E? “Yes, does it matter?” “No, I guess I don’t know any chick singers named Lord without an E either.” She then played me about 4 seconds of Royals, through shitty iphone speakers, from across the room and I knew I loved it. She looked at me and said, “You love this don’t you?” She knows me fairly well. I just nodded in shame. Ella Yelich-O'Connor goes by Lorde, is sixteen years old, and from Auckland. In addition to that, she’s got some amazing pop singles on her EP The Love...

There is no point in hiding on denying my bias: I'm a Radiation City fan. The music that Rad City creates is a perfect match to my ears: a little lo-fi, a little haunting, a little retro, a little reverby, and a LOT beautiful. They are the catsup to my weiner, the Beaver to my Cleaver, and the Brad to my 'Gelina. Listening to the EP that they released last year, Cool Nightmare, is like walking through a quaint neighborhood in the early 60s that is so perfect...it's almost creepy. And I love that sort of thang. ....BUT what if I didn't like their new album Animals in the Median? I've hyped it up on Syffal and I've hyped it up in my head. My expectations were so lofty that I wasn't sure they could be met by anybody, let alone these 5 adorable sacks of cuteness from...

This past weekend i went road trippin across the midwest. Naturally, before leaving, I packed up the man pod with a bunch of albums that I've been meaning to listen to. My listening queue is back logged like a motherfucker and all the time spent in the car would be a good thing, right? Wrong. And I blame Del. Fucking Del sent me Caveman's new self-titled album. I thought that I'd check it out because he was all high on the song In the City. He claimed, and I quote, 'The song's sound oozes a haunted coolness that I want to bottle and spritz on my balls.' Thems some strong words! TRUST ME. DEL ONLY SAYS THAT ABOUT RYAN GOSSLING'S CHARACTER IN DRIVE. Anyhoo....I popped in the album and it sucked me into a timeless vortex of climax inducing synth only to spit me out...