Album Reviews

There have been few albums in the past year or so, where I've actually noted the exact track and specific time when a song has encouraged me to throw both of my hands off the fucking steering wheel up into the air and tilt my head back with my eyes closed. TRAFFIC BE DAMNED. Those albums where it makes no fucking difference where you left off the last time, just as it makes no fucking difference where you started this time through. Its thick and gelatinous deliciousness knocks you flat and instantly you're floating on your back staring at a sky full of stars at any fucking time of day. Any particular song at any particular point can take the mundane and tedious and throw a fist all up in them guts. All of a sudden you've gone from a listless bumper to bumper traffic to a tense chase scene...

Ever swim naked in a lake on a hot summer night? It is exhilarating ain’t it? Parts of your body that never tingled before tingle, you soul comes alive and it feels as though some primal scream might rip it right out of your chest so you can French kiss it right there on the spot. The Cowboy’s Prayer by Mutual Benefit feels a lot like one of these baptismal late night swims. It envelops you with a warmth and slick joy that is as sensual as it is relaxing. Thirty seconds into Auburn Epitaphs I was sitting in front of my computer, semi-clothed and semi-erect flashing back to a particularly enlightening acid trip from my college years in upstate New York. It felt very much like that perfect spring day on that country road speeding by farms strewn with fields of dried wheat...

Before you rejoice to the gods of the interwebs for bringing you the long awaited fourth album from a reunited Bloc Party allow me to warn you about what you are about to experience. This Modern Love of mine forced me to go hunting for witches and babble on and on about one of my favorite bands in a state of flux. These are just my little thoughts. Don't let them cloud your judgement too much. It's just a spot of positive tension. This is at both time your once and future kings' Bloc Party and then it is also some weird odd heavy buzzsaw by way of the late 90's crunchy guitar rock Bloc. Well beyond "Helicopter" and into a totally different realm that,if you are looking for Silent Alarm, might have you let down. Truthfully I'll gladly take A Tale of Two Weekends in the Cities (see what...

Tom's Review Sometimes one just has to thank Del LeFevre for his persistence. Del initially told me about Poolside's new album Pacific Standard Time and I ignored him because of the brief description I read: pool side dance music. Not my thang, bro. What, are we at Hard Rock's Rehab amongst all the D-bags with shaved chests and barbwire tattoos and loose women with Daddy issues and vagina sores? Dude, I'm fucking 32, I have two kids and a chest I haven't groomed in 10 years. I even named one of my nipple hairs Rapunzel. BUT Del told me a second time; so I humored him. I had an hour to kill while I drove into Chicago last weekend for a concert. I popped this shit on to my USB drive and I was fucking blown away; it was a pre-party in the form of chill-out dance music. Yes, the...

I'm not afraid to hide my complete fandom when it comes to Zavala and Onry Ozzborn as individuals. Zavala has made some of the most amazingly crisp and perfect fucking beats I've heard since I've even remembered trying to remember everything I've ever wanted to remember remembering as beat perfection. And Onry, well, I will never hide my excitement for the dude. Onry exudes everything I want in an emcee: a sense of humor, a style all his own, a voice I fucking love, the ability to create inside jokes with the listener after the very first listen, a meter you seriously cannot fucking fuck with, and the ability to feel cooler just by listening to the motherfucker. When combined, these two jagbags have managed to create some of my favorite hip hop to date. Their debut fully as Dark Time...

Scoundrels are the definitive SUAP rock band. SUAP is the acronym I came up with when a band displays a consistent ability to just Show Up and Play, and Scoundrels are the prime example in my ear holes currently. There's no electronic riff raff, pre-programmed reverb vocal effects or any other ingredient they can't fucking murder right the Fuck in front of you. Don't believe me? I placed a live studio recording video below, and they MURDER THAT BRO BRO. Raw is too unpolished an adjective to throw their direction, but they take advantage of the fact that they sound so fucking live on their recordings that they utilize a smidge of rawness, and it takes them from mere bar band to a fucking colossal throwback snifter of fucking "shitballs this is delicious". Scoundrels' Sexy Weekend EP...

Salty old veterans of SYFFAL and our Track Marks mixes will recall enjoying Chromatics' slow burning cover of The Boss' I'm on Fire. The rest of you with poor memory or the even more reprehensible characteristic of never downloading my mixes might recall hearing the Chromatics Tick of the Clock as part of the stellar Drive Soundtrack. What? You still haven't seen that movie yet? You're so fucking dead to me. The movie is so badass. It's actually two movies if you really think about it. The movie switches gears (pun shamefully intended) from heart crushing romance to head stomping bloody action in a way that was kind of similar in the way that Full Metal Jacket went from bootcamp mind meltdowns to the physical shit and sucky sucky of 'Nam. Two stand alone stories with different tones and...

I'm not one to shy away from my sensitive side, especially when it comes to my first impressions of a band I'd never heard of, delivering music I'm fucking instantly erect for. A Silent Film immediately fucking kicked me in the throat with the opening track Reaching The Potential, as its internally inspiring and orchestrally sullen gorgeousness is fucking disarmingly huge. It sounds like a soundtrack to a film where some skinny muthafucker is running towards who the Fuck knows what, but all he needs to know is he isn't putting up with what he's running from anymore bro bro. Mmhmm. shit that hits me in the 'introspective drama monologue' portion of my sissy half is one of my weaknesses, and A Silent Film smacked me in that jiggly part where I listen to Coldplay's "Fix You" on repeat in the...

I've already publicly sucked this dude Ambinate off. His shit is fucking ridiculously hell yeah without me even realizing he's released more music. He's already crafted some of my favorite tunes to decompress alongside, but his latest EP titled Horizon might be his best four song offering to date. Calmingly progressive, Horizon takes a turn for the distant and intricately sketches an internal drift from the stressful. If there was a simpler way to disconnect from the day to day stresses, I doubt I'd be such a fucking fanboy over Ambinate's way of taking me out of my insanity and gently dropping me onto that waterbed of jesus christ this is good weed. It's like the muthafucker harnessed a small village's population of glitches and bloops and rather than running me out of...

Matt Cain is currently pitching a perfect game in the 8th inning as I type this. I find myself pausing with each pitch...but I refuse to pause my iTunes. What could possibly be so important on my iTunes that it trump the audio of a perfect game? I mean a perfect game is history, right? It's baseball immortality. Well I just so happen to be listening to a perfect album, Stepdad's Wildlife Pop. I'm as locked in on the twelve popped out synth and falsetto rockers as I am to each painted on the black fastball and each Bugs Bunny change piece that Cain throws at the helpless Astros. Looking at that hapless and hopeless Astros lineup I'm thinking that me calling Stepdad's album a perfect album to be a greater accomplishment. Wildlife Pop is a 12 inning perfect game of...