Category Archives: New Album Review
New Album Review: Kate Bush – 50 Words For Snow (Fish Music, 2011)
Earlier this year, Kate Bush released Director’s Cut, an album that had her reworking 11 songs from some of her earlier albums. It was good, but a lot of the remakes were unnecessary considering they were fine the way they were. I was gonna do an “Old v. New” segment, but I couldn’t do [...]
Metallica Machine Music
Rating : 3.2 (out of 10; Yes I’m succumbing to the Pitchfork douchey number scale, cuz I like numbers) Peanut butter and jelly. Spaghetti and meatballs. Captain & Tennille. Lou Reed and Metallica. Which one of these things is not like the other? And no, the answer is not the Captain & Tennille, because [...]
New Album Review: Steve Reich – WTC 9/11 (Nonesuch, 2011)
NYC Native son Steve Reich, minimalist pioneer responsible for such riveting works like Music for 18 Musicians & Tehillim, has unearthed a new piece entitled ‘WTC 9/11.’ And good timing as the 10th anniversary has come and gone. Working with his friends in the Kronos Quartet, as he has twice before, this 3-part piece contains [...]
SPIN Presents NEWERMIND
In one of the few issues of SPIN magazine that gets it right these days, the most recent issue commemorates the 20th(!!!!!!!!!!!) anniversary of Nirvana’s classic album Nevermind, giving it a lengthy feature. In it, artists such as Henry Rollins, Patton Oswalt and Marnie Stern explain what the album meant to them at the time, [...]
Stone Temple Pilots – s/t (Atlantic, 2010)
There’s a new chapter in the post-grunge soap opera known as the Stone Temple Pilots, starring the theatrical and problematic Scott Weiland, and three guys who don’t do heroin (or at least as far as I know). The last installment of their saga was back in 2001, with Shangri-La Dee Da, which pretty much showed [...]
Under Byen – Alt Er Tabt (Paper Bag, 2010)
I didn’t even intend to review a new album today, but then this came to my attention, and I just had to write something. Under Byen (Danish for “Below the City”) is a post-rock outift from Denmark that doesn’t adhere to the “rules” of post-rock. Instead of being Copenhagen’s answer to Sigur Ros or Mogwai, [...]