The cult of Twee is one I’ve never really quite understood, despite owning a vintage camera and having nodded my head gently to several Belle & Sebastian records. There’s are a ton of facets to the sound and the subculture, many of which I haven’t even attempted to explore, so I’ll try not to make [...]
Cornelius – Fantasma
12 November 2012 by Leave a Comment
Japan’s Keigo Oyamada, a.k.a. Cornelius, is often touted as a modern pop savant, and it’s for good reason. There are few things as gleefully disorienting as a Cornelius album, and Fantasma, his 1998 U.S. debut, is just the kind of sonic tapestry that can keep its listeners as simultaneously confused and enthused as a horde [...]
Aphex Twin – SAW 85-92
31 October 2012 by Leave a Comment
Aphex Twin’s debut album Selected Ambient Works 85-92 might sound fairly vanilla to us now — and in truth it’s not Richard D. James’ most adventurous effort — but there’s no denying that it has a unique combination of rhythm and ambience that is utterly seductive. Though James’ follow up to this album, the appropriately [...]
Rod Stewart – Tonight I’m Yours
23 October 2012 by Leave a Comment
This is a terrible terrible album. Rod Stewart’s 1981 effort, titled Tonight I’m Yours, is an album that has been certified as platinum in the U.S., sounds like a bastardized collection of the state of the industry, which makes sense in a way. The tracklist’s sound jumps around dramatically, with Stewart drawing from personnel versed [...]
Moon Duo – Circles
10 October 2012 by Leave a Comment
It’s been interesting to watch the bands that were cooked in the crucible of the recent lo-fi explosions. Records from acts like the Dum Dum Girls, whose raw, punkish power seemed to tear at the fabric covers of my speakers now have a much cleaner, more refined sound, opting for delicate songwriting over fuzzy production. [...]
David Bowie – Station to Station
2 October 2012 by Leave a Comment
The thing you’ll always hear about Bowie is that he’s a shapeshifter. An artist whose style and practice hardly ever stayed in one place. It’s a state of mind he perhaps shares with some of history’s most famous figures — Leonardo da Vinci and Pablo Picasso included. It’s definitely not my place to say that [...]
David Byrne & St. Vincent – Love…
17 September 2012 by Leave a Comment
Few teamups have had me as intrigued as that of Annie Clark (a.k.a. St. Vincent) and David Byrne‘s. If Byrne’s past partnerships (Brian Eno, Arcade Fire, Selena, etc.) are of any indication, the ex-Talking Head is a sucker for throwing his well-established sound into the thralls of various music cultures and seeing what happens. Clark, [...]
Gotan Project – La Revancha…
5 September 2012 by Leave a Comment
Gotan Project’s 2001 album La Revancha del Tango is good music to shop to, which is a statement that might get taken as an insult from most contexts. To be fair, it’s often hard to see the cultural value of a song that’s been used to hawk dish detergent. Then again, it’s not entirely impossible. [...]
Kyuss – Blues for the Red Sun
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