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(10/02/14 11:47pm)
The Rural Alberta Advantage, rolling into their third album, are runners. They've left behind the towns that made them, driving for a nameless city. It's a city that's “cold, and cuts through [their] teeth,” but in its embrace, they'll do fine. They run from their rural namesake, someplace hinted at in the “Star Trek”-referencing enterprise “Vulcan, AB” and, once free of its grip, continue to run... and run...
(09/30/14 3:28am)
King Tuff (real name: Kyle Thomas) doesn’t hide behind any autobiographical ambiguities on Black Moon Spell. In fact, he’s pretty forward about who he is and what he wants to do. In “Madness,” he declares his raison d’être in traditional Alice Cooper fashion: “King Tuff is my name/I got madness in my brain/Pleased to meet ya/I’m gonna eat ya/because I’m batshit insane!” Nor does he hide where he comes from; echoing Springsteenian mantras, Tuff declares in “Black Holes in Stereo”: “I learned more working at the record store than I ever did in high school.”
(09/24/14 4:30am)
As climate change descends on the habitats of North America and the rest of the world, another force presses against ecosystems and forces them to adapt; the way we divide and use land also impacts ecosystems across the entire country.
(09/24/14 2:07am)
It’s weirdly affecting; it demands silent reverence as much as invested conversation, walled in by stained, hardwood frames, images of sketches and figures telling a story of humanity during one of history’s greatest tragedies. The space closes in around the exhibit, fostering intimacy with the portraits and figures as one makes their way around the room. Plaques tell their stories, while glass encases two recreations in the center of the room. A scroll faces the front room, messages of remembrance and reaction scrawled across it.
(09/19/14 1:46am)
The dreamscapes within Always Returning aren't the liveliest, as more often than not they float on into some kind of content oblivion. Always detached from some kind of grounded beauty, Engineers used their fourth LP to play up intricate, masterful detail and stir it into a whirlpool of hypnotic banality, where moments of brilliant craft only briefly shine through generic synthesizer frolics and distant vocal clouds.
(09/09/14 6:06am)
Justin Townes Earle’s Single Mothers finds the singer-songwriter weaving his stories through family blues. Its stars dwell on broken families and empty homes, the goodbyes and animosities of those unfortunate people on the losing end of a “Hungry Heart” walk-out and the memories they left behind in an attic’s picture-drawer. Their melancholy, obnoxiously literal at times (see “Today and a Lonely Night”), is given a surprisingly warm partner in Earle’s Americana.
(05/02/14 4:05am)
The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger is Sean Lennon's psychedelic rock project with Charlotte Kemp Muhl. If you read that right, it means you already have some preconceived notions about what this band and their latest album should sound like. It's the curse of the Lennon name; Sean Lennon releases will forever carry the weight of some perceived duty to continue John Lennon's legacy.
(04/18/14 12:49am)
“All of these people, none of them give a damn for me,” lead singer Cameron Neal cries on “Let Go.” While this song doesn't come around until the end of Fear in Bliss, much of Horse Thief's second album echoes that sentiment—overcoming abandon and a perceived meaninglessness are rung throughout Fear in Bliss. What's remarkable is these feelings aren't lost in what, sonically, radiates with uplifting folk rock and jangle pop embellishments.
(04/10/14 4:01am)
“Ça va?” asked Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni to the audience in French. He repeated himself, this time in English. “Are you happy?” The response was quick: a riotous roar of approval tore through the Majestic Theatre. Hands clapped a collage of tempos. Cheers in French, English and even Tinariwen’s own language of Tamasheq echoed off the walls. A smile on his face, Alhousseyni started playing a gentle fill on his acoustic guitar, one that signaled for the rest of the band to follow.
(04/08/14 4:28am)
Thursday night’s audience at the Majestic was alive. Fists in the air, they matched Against Me! singer Laura Jane Grace word-for-word as the band blasted their way through a set list that dug deep into the story of the Gainesville, Fla.’s punk rock titans. The audience caved in on itself in a crowd-wide mosh pit. Fans’ hearts set ablaze by hearing their favorite songs through the amplifiers.
(04/04/14 1:41am)
Nickel Creek’s comeback album deserves a welcome as warm as it is. Dubbed A Dotted Line, the album marks a reunion between guitarist Sean Watkins, fiddler Sara Watkins and mandolinist Chris Thile. The trio had parted ways in 2007, each one honing their skills in other projects ranging from renowned indie-poppers The Decemberists to the rightfully acclaimed classical collective Goat Rodeo Sessions. If anything, A Dotted Line shows that the time away must’ve been incredibly refreshing for the trio.
(04/02/14 1:22am)
Bellowed groans ring out in a blackened marshland. Through the sludge comes a cadence of guitars—each one roaring with the darkest tones imaginable—over booming drums. Banners declaring free will and defiance lie in the muck, their creeds echoed by those haunting groans. This is Heathen, the latest release by doom metal band Thou.
(03/13/14 9:42pm)
“I will speak now,” the Spring Offensive declares over reggae grooves and chiming guitars on their debut full-length album, Young Animal Hearts. After five years of blistering performances and staggering singles, the Oxford, England indie rockers are given time to speak here. Eleven songs make up Young Animal Hearts, 11 songs were collected over the years and make up something more akin to a greatest hits than simply a debut album.
(02/27/14 8:15pm)
A pair of brothers-in-folkery fill a rented room with the voices of two guitars and harmonized melancholy. They trade off everything from blues fills and descending scales to tales of “Pigeon Town” and the least hated of the least favorite sons, doing so with tiny embellishments found beyond the walls of that rented room. This is Voices in a Rented Room, the debut album by Americana troubadours Donovan Quinn and Ben Chasny under their new project New Bums.
(02/25/14 6:15am)
Saturday night, under Union lights and a Badger’s roof, two of Chicagoland’s up-and-comers established their rock 'n' roll empires, if only for a night. Grunge school graduates Mutts and heartland indie rockers Empires took over the Sett’s stage Saturday, blaring their way through sets full of slow-burner jams and light-hearted indie rock, sprinkled with sharp-edged grunge and shades of punk.
(02/13/14 5:44am)
Emmaar is an album born from conflict and exile. Its creators, the Malian band Tinariwen, recently found themselves far from their home in the Sahara, where the desert lifestyle gave life to this band of Tuareg nomads. Displaced by Sharia law and its extremist enforcers, Tinariwen were forced to leave their homeland in Mali and take up residence in a more distant land: the Joshua Tree desert in California. It’s from there that Emmaar, their latest album, was recorded.
(02/04/14 7:42am)
Travis Morrison appears to have been pretty busy for a guy who “retired” from music. Between the side project Time Travel and The Dismemberment Plan’s poorly received comeback (2013’s Uncanney Valley), as well as that Huffington Post gig, Morrison has had a lot on his plate. Yet, the man continues to pump out music, now with the backing of a trio of bearded rockers who call themselves The Burlies. The Burlies EP, their debut, features a variety of rock ‘n’ roll music stripped of that DP-born experimentalism that Morrison’s thrown into past records.
(01/31/14 2:04am)
There are two Brixtons. One is home to the everyday hustle and bustle of London, where flat dwellers commute to work and brag about their favorite corner bars. The other is a far darker world, one that exists on the edge of sanity. There, gang violence and drug use are very real. It’s where good people are sucked in and driven to the brink. This is the Brixton that Darren Cunningham came from and the Brixton he—through his techno-minimalist character Actress—wanted to capture on his latest LP, Ghettoville.
(01/24/14 2:21am)
With his latest release, Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son, you might find yourself thinking Damien Jurado is some kind of guitar-swinging preacher with everything he says about an “eternal son” and his adventures on the “Jericho Road.” He’s not. Jurado is more of the heart-on-sleeve folk artist, whose music is elevated out of the coffeehouse through producer Richard Swift’s work behind a soundboard. Their third release together, Brothers, is a choppy album, but one that retains a few victories for the duo.
(12/06/13 5:47am)
Avant-garders Xiu Xiu dug their way through history on this one. Jamie Stewart—Xiu Xiu’s frontman, founder, leader, etc. —looked at jazz legend Nina Simone for inspiration, as he and a team of jazz players deliver a collection of jazz duels and whispered lyrics that serve as reworks of cuts from Nina’s deep, 50-year catalog. Jazz is all about free spirit and pushing musicians to their limits (just ask Guitar George), and Nina definitely delivers just enough free spirit to keep it fighting through avant-garde’s cage.