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Album Review

My Politic - Anchor

Johnny Symmes | June 18, 2015
Every now and then I will catch myself in a short lived giggle fit about someone’s particular musical taste. Shame on me I know. Inevitably they will ask me what dark musical secrets are hiding in my closet. I will pull out some folky/country/Americana shit and they won’t scold me and usually will agree that it’s awesome. Why am I so ashamed of this?? It just feels wrong to like something that Tom would enjoy. In my mind I am too hardcore to like this sentimental music that is softer than the top of Joel’s head. That is something I have found solace in since my time with SYFFAL. I can express my dark side and tell you about how much of softy I really am. I can unabashedly bare my soul and get weepy about a band like My Politic. I acquired this super exxxclusive new album, Anchor...
Album Review

Palace - Chase The Light EP

Tom Doz | June 17, 2015
I remember the exact moment Palace got me. I was halfway down Soundcloud's algorithm worm-hole. It was a clear night and the stars in the big dipper pan handle were aligned with the freckles on my navel. The brisk breeze was whistlin' through my mesh shorts keeping my mid section a comfortable 98 degrees at 56% humidity. I was slow noddin' to the medium paced beat and chiming guitar of this song called 'Kiloran' by this band named Palace. The reverb on the vocals sounded like it was coming from a cavernous pleasure hole. It was like an arranged marriage in Westeros between the sons from House Local Natives and House Grizzly Bear. Then, all of the sudden, as the song breaks down and the singer is chanting 'Kiiiii-looooo-oooooran....Kiiiii-looooo-oooooran' sister husband Robin Pecknold and...
Album Review

DVS - DVTV

Lang Vo | June 15, 2015
Unless you're someone who enjoys cheese puffs, and domestic beer, there's a ton of great music out in the world these days. Unfortunately, there is also 200% more piss water-flavored American ball stink attempting to rub its musky humidity ALL into our ear holes.  Let's just say DVS is not one of those icky, smelly ones. Like his friend, Lakutis, DVS has a great ear for beats. But DVS is also a rapper-ass rapper who raps the raps right out of his raps. You rap me? Because there is something definitely wrong with my personality and face, I'm the type of person who instantly checks who produces what. The producers on DVTV are some of my favorite beats makers out right now: Yuri Beats ( "Good Morning America" and "Dangerous" ), Bill Ding ( "Money Train" ), Steel Tip Dove ( "It's...
Album Review

Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Multi-Love

Tom Doz | June 11, 2015
My bread and butter as a blogger, as Father John Misty hilariously described to me once, is playing the game of 'sloppy influence identification.' As an artist I'm sure he looks at the game as an insulting and lazy way for bloggers to write about music. BUT I'm just SO GOOD at it. And it gives me this warped sense of pride that I can reach back into my useless vault of music to pluck out stupid small moments of similarity between two or more bands/artists. Then I make a grotesque and juvenille analogy and I'm golden.  i.e. [fill in the blank] sounds like he's been emitted from the singer of Fine Young Cannables and then crusted in Stevie Winwood's chest hair. This is the reason I both love and hate UMO. They don't sound like anyone other than UMO. It's why I love to listen to them, but...
Album Review

Sister Crayon - Devoted

Brandon Backhaus | June 11, 2015
I'm sitting on a chair. I'm drinking a cup of coffee. The sky is gray. Not violent but close. My feet are bare. My mind clouded by the weight of freedom. It races. It gets stuck on itself. Music is a key. Or a brake. Or like when you refocus a projector and realize just how out of it things were. Thoughts stop. Spill instead of rush. Seep instead of the normal downhill stream tumbles over rocks and eddies in little pools of holy shit. It feels deep and comforting and I feel grateful for whatever reaches its hand through the fog and grabs tight. Holds me in the those moments. The first time I heard Terra Lopez's voice I knew everything was going to change. Personally. Her bitches' brew is of lust and sneer and giggle and soul, vulnerability, strength, honesty, and-maybe most of all-...
Album Review

Jamie xx - In Colour

Joel Frieders | June 3, 2015
I am, for the first time in my adult life, sitting on my own patio, typing on a computer, at my own actual patio table, not made out of cheap plastic. As simple and NBD as that sounds, you don't understand, I hath never done such a thing thing. I never realized the pleasure until I spent the last three years of my life dreaming about doing exactly what the fuck I'm doing at this very second because I didn't know I was missing something until I was alerted to what I was missing by someone I trusted. I'm pretty fucking thankful right now. This is how I found out about Jamie xx. Yes, I have listened to The xx, and yes I am aware that Jamie xx is one of the x's in The xx. But like most other things, I just don't have (allow me to quote corporate America) "enough bandwidth" to know about Jamie...
Album Review

Jonathan Parker - Interloper

Brandon Backhaus | May 27, 2015
The kid downstairs plays the same few notes over and over again on the saxophone. You'd think, in the two years I've lived here, that he'd have progressed some. But nope. Same couple of notes. Every day. I kind of want to help him but I don't know the first things about saxophones. In fact, I don't know the first thing about playing jazz. And that's what makes the fact that I love Jonathan Parker's Interloper so surprising. We accept music submissions here at Syffal. And believe it or not, we don't get very many straight-up jazz submissions. A lot of goth rap, synth pop duos, indie folk, and post rock bands. But almost no jazz. I was half-assedly perusing our unsolicited music submissions, a wasteland of vaccous turds, my eyes basically looking backwards in my head I was rolling...
Second Hand King - Before the Bomb Drops
Album Review

Second Hand King - Before the Bomb Drops

Brandon Backhaus | May 24, 2015
Second Hand King came to us the old-fashioned way. He reached out and asked nicely. His album, Before the Bomb Drops hit the spot like I would have never thought Kansas could do. His piano-driven raps are a glorious tornado of I hate myself.  The record:  It's funny. "Hold on Taylor Swift, I'm a let you finish…" - from "Before the Bomb Drops" It's poignant. "Why do I feel like I fucked up?" - from "About a Family Member Almost Dying" It's original. Second Hand King has his own thing going on. It's like some genetically-modified husk-free corn where the kernels alternate in the shape of the faces of Spoken Nerd, Billy Joel, Mayer Hawthorne, and Mike D. Cover that shit in butter and invite me to the fucking barbecue, ssssssSON! A lot of listeners like a polished product. I've...
Album Review

Psymon Spine - Psymon Spine

Christopher Bell | May 21, 2015
Psymon Spine are Peter Spears, Noah Prebish, Devon Kilburn, Chris Beckett, and Mike Rudinski. Produced by Graham Dickson (Crystal Fighters) for his Axis Mundi label, this new self-titled EP was recorded throughout North America, including Brooklyn, Saratoga Springs, Southern California, Boston, Costa Rica, Mexico City, and Woodstock. The four tracks here mix an almost blinding array of influences including the high energy of The Go! Team ("Experience Machine"), the happy head-nodding grooves of Django Django ("Shocked") and the trippy electro dance pop of Primal Scream ("Eric's Basement & Secret Tunnels")
The star of the outing however is closer "Gears". With a big hippy singalong chorus reminiscent of Ages and Ages beside interesting deconstructionist arrangements you might...
Album Review

Talk In Tongues - Alone With A Friend

Christopher Bell | May 20, 2015
Jesus, how much good psychedelic rock are we going to hear this year? Just this week, you can take your pick between new records from Thee Oh Sees, Dustin Lovelis, Psymon Spine, Dirty Fences, and Talk in Tongues. They are all doing different tripped out takes on stuff that was coming out forty years ago, and it all sounds fantastic and fresh. Each member of Los Angeles foursome Talk In Tongues was a refugee from another band that just wasn’t working right when they first came together last year. Back then, they were barely acquaintances-guitarist and singer McCoy Kirgo remembers seeing his future bandmates at shows in their other bands, and then at parties after the shows. And if you looked into the music they’d already made, it didn’t quite make sense for them to put a band together. (...

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