Results tagged “rockinourturntable”

While we're sure there will plenty of eyes directed at another female singer's long-delayed album dropping today, we feel that it'd be a pity if that caused Annie's excellent sophomore effort to get overlooked. Anne Strand, better known as simply Annie, was all set to release Don't Stop a year ago before abruptly cutting ties from her record label and pulling the album from the release schedule. Word filtered through that she was reworking tracks and recording new material. We'd heard the unreleased version of Don't Stop and while it wasn't perfect we weren't sure if this album revamp was really necessary.

We were not sure why Them Crooked Vultures wasn't calling themselves Queens Of the Stone Age, since singer Josh Homme leads that group, Dave Grohl has spent a fair amount of time drumming for them in the past, and the addition of a new bassist -- in this case Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones -- is really nothing all that unusual. After listening to their self-titled debut though, we can see why a name change was in order. Them Crooked Vultures shares many similarities with Queens Of the Stone Age, but the former is a group effort while the latter is driven by a single man ... and it shows.

Our first clue that Kid Sister -- Melisa Young-- was on the road to fame is when she apologized to a friend of ours while telling him she wouldn't be able to babysit his kids any longer due to her hectic travel schedule. This also offers some insight into what it is that sets her apart from so many other hip-hop-popsters; even while shooting videos with Kanye West she was picking up work on the side babysitting for friends. It's that combination of a solid work ethic and her lack of pretension that makes her debut, Ultraviolet, such a satisfying listen.

Where Did All My People Go is an apt title for the full length debut from The Prairie Cartel. The band -- Scott Lucas, Blake Smith, and Mike Willison -- is stocked with some of the survivors from the mid-'90s Chicago music scene that never stopped producing new music. The trio comes from a guitar heavy past but their mutual love of electronic music brought them together to synthesize their own take on motivating the denizens of the dance floor.

We've decided to cease apologizing for Weezer. The band is what it is. If you're looking for Rivers Cuomo to ever attain the heights of Pinkerton or The Blue Album you're always going to be sorely disappointed. And Jesus if the man doesn't make it hard to even enjoy his music when he throws garbage like Weezer Snuggies and duets with Kennny G into the mix.

Hockey insidiously worms it's way into your heart. We've heard enough dance rock bands in recent years to grow suspicious of any group that could be counted among that ilk. We don't wish James Murphy or The Rapture ill for influencing so many kids starting bands, but goddamn if have to suffer through another group of college kids caterwauling over a disco beat we're gonna start smashing 12 inch singles over somebody's carefully mussed head!

We've always been confused by the folks that view The Flaming Lips as some shiny, happy, modern version of up with people. Yes, the strains of "Do You Realize?" are joyous but have the fans that think the band is all about being one big party ever actually listened to the group's lyrics. While the darkness has never left the group's basic aesthetic we believe it's been misconstrued by many and mistaken as a vehicle meant for confetti filled cannons, half-naked dancing aliens, and a white-suited guy wearing a Hulk fist while rolling over the crowd in a giant bubble.

It's hard to overstate the importance of The Jesus Lizard both to Chicago and to their contribution to the music scene in general. Their brutal songs delivered with strangled and smothered screams hitched atop rhythms with human swing and impossibly tricky tempo changes were truly from another world. The band's possibilities were hinted at in singer David Yow and bassist David Wm. Sims' earlier band Scratch Acid, and that work seems like a sketch of things to come. But once you added guitarist Duane Denison and drummer Mac McNeilly into the mix the resulting controlled pandemonium was impossible to resist.

We have yet to actually dislike a Pearl Jam album but admit it's been a long time since we were thrilled by one. Something seemed to have infected Eddie Vedder after the band's loose Mirror Ball / Merkin Ball collaborations with Neil Young. It was almost as if he was afraid to let any joy enter the music any more for fear his icon would disapprove. Vedder's vocals ceased to jump, and most songs fall into one of two categories; they were either raging screams of anger and despair or they were quiet ballads that barely moved beyond a handful of notes. There were deviations form these formulas, but the majority of the band's middle work fits those categories.

Stockholm's The Legends create the kind of genre-defying music where you never know what to expect with the next release. For his fourth release under The Legends moniker, Johan Angergård again surprises fans and taps a wide range of collaborators. Over And Over is a testament to Angergård's taste and musical prowess, combining piercing instrumentation with bright indie pop melody.

That opener, "Crystal Visions," sets a strong template for the rest of the album including gauzy guitars, steady drums, dreamy vocals, and hints and wisps of melody. It's all pretty simple really. So why does the album feel like a strong contender in that inevitable listing of the best albums of 2009? Why would something that sounds so unsurprising keep popping up on our playlists when far more unique tunes get a couple listens before getting filed away in our mental vault.

Classes are back in session, which gives us the perfect reason to tell you about Lamar Holley's newest album. Confessions of a College Student is an "autobiographical one-man pop-musical" according to its album cover. If Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman had ever reteamed for a followup to their 1970 masterpiece, and made a concept album about higher education, it might have sounded something like Holley's record. It has Newman's love of ragtime and bittersweet melody, and intertwined vocal arrangements like Nilsson.

Soulsavers is essentially a studio construction built by the duo of Rich Machin and Ian Glover. They create deft instrumental tracks that range from industrial scrawl to gospel wail. Their previous album was one of our favorites from 2007 primarily because amidst their meticulously crafted electro-soul rock jams, they employed an incredibly potent secret weapon in guest singer Mark Lanegan's vocals. Lanegan's presence took what would have been an interesting production project and elevated it into something viscerally appealing.

Brendan Benson still isn't exactly a household name, though if most folks saw him they'd recognize him as the skinny blonde dude who sings in The Raconteurs with Jack White. Benson's history actually stretches much further back to the days before his 1996 debut, One Mississippi. A listen to any of his solo work quickly uncovers just what his major contribution to The Raconteurs is: Benson is the pop foil to White's rock menace.

Julian Plenti is actually Interpol's Paul Banks and, unsurprisingly his debut Julian Plenti Is...Skyscraper sounds a lot like, well, Interpol. There is a difference though. Interpol, as their career has progressed, has continued to paint themselves into a corner, creating work that was ever more mannered and ever more lacking in any breathing space or spontaneity. Banks doesn't exactly break the mold on his solo debut, but he has recaptured some of the swing that made Interpol's Turn on the Bright Lights such a pleasure to listen to.

Twenty-three year old Londonite Ben Esser might just have the voice and face to rekindle Americans love affair with British pop. Impossibly young, stylish enough to have already been recruited as a muse of Hedi Slimane, and a gifted wordsmith and producer, Esser boldly debuts Braveface with a prowess for success.

Jarvis Cocker's Further Complications was recorded right here in Chicago with favorite son and studio egghead Steve Albini engineering. It's a sexy beast of an album, one that trades in the gentler strokes of his solo debut for a rougher, raspy, well-fucked feel. Cocker brings together Mick Jagger's swagger with David Bowie's breadth and range and makes it all his own to create a white boy blues with swagger and stomp.

We think it's safe to say that The Sounds have no interest in really engaging you on an intellectual level. You can probably also bet that The Sounds don't care if you call 'em a retro act. All this Swedish quintet seem focused on is throwing a hell of a dance rock party colored by bright neon. We suspect they wouldn't mind at all if you were to pin them as New Romantics.

When the lead single off your debut is called "Fuck The Pain Away" you tend to a) quickly pigeonhole your philosophical approach to your music and b) provide a pretty high bar to leap over if you want to top yourself in terms of sexual brashness. When you're Peaches, you accomplish both by providing ever more elaborate stage shows with varying degrees of clothing involved while simultaneously producing throbbing albums teeming with confident sexuality that makes something like Mick Jagger's preening look positively neutered.

Black Moth Super Rainbow follows the proud tradition of bands that sound as if they've grown up with nothing but latter period Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev records living on the tape deck of their tour van. Their latest album, Eating Us, is produced by loooongtime Lips / Rev producer Dave Fridmann so we feel it's safe to assume the band has zero problem with anyone drawing a sonic comparison between them and their obvious predecessors.

B-side/rarities compilations can be a tricky thing. There's a reason the songs ultimately didn't make the final cut of any LP but at the same time, an artist has an opportunity to get music out that hasn't been heard before, providing a nice compliment to an artist's discography. But it's a fine line to walk: the compilation can be either be tedious exercise in lackluster material or a fine addition to a catalog. Fortunately, Around the Well, the new two-disc compilation of previously unreleased songs from folk act Iron & Wine, hits all the right notes, literally and figuratively, providing fans with a nice fill-in-the-gaps collection.

Metric has long run in the same circles as the Brooklyn dance rock bands that have choked mp3 blogs in recent years. They set themselves apart by 1) ditching NYC for Toronto ASAP and 2) always injecting just enough artsy turns into their toe-tappers to keep them interesting and above the fray. While this set them above the competition, their hesitation at just embracing the big hook kept the band from moving beyond an intellectual joy to own the dancefloor.

The advance word on The Living Things' Habeas Corpus had us a tad worried, since a snippet we heard of lead single "Let It Rain" seemed to indicate the St. Louis-based foursome might be headed down more radio frienfdly terrain via a softening sound. While it is true that "Let It Rain" is the closest thing to a power ballad the band has ever penned, it's not exactly a wave your Bic in the air style tearjerker. Instead it thrusts the band's always present penchant for melody to the forefront, along it to bounce along on a tight rope of melancholy joy beofre erupting in a shroud created by an army of distorted guitars.

O.K., we admit we're way behind on this one, but when The Webstirs' new album hit our in-box we thought we had just discovered an incredibly promising new local band ... until we realized they've been around 15+ years. Of course once we learned that all we could do is gasp in disbelief that these guys aren't more popular and have flown so far under the radar.

The rain of praise tumbling down upon Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion has been so grossly effusive it borders upon caricature. One would be forgiven for hating the band outright based on the over-the-top praise already being heaped on the disc, available only on vinyl until January 20. However, do not believe the hype.

The following ten groups released albums or EPs that we believe launched them far above the roiling masses making up the Chicago music scene. While these are our favorites it should be noted that this was an amazingly strong year for the local scene, and we could have easily made a top 50 list without much of a problem. In fact, just reviewing the bands while making this list we realized how thankful we are to be located in such a musically fertile city!

Oh, Chicago...thank you for giving us two of America's most eye-catching and compelling political stories from 2008, one spectacular baseball playoff collapse, a glorious summer (met by an unusually nasty, early winter) and a cache of talented local artists to comb through. Without further ado:

Yup, here it is, the inevitable "Best of 2008" music list (a later post centering on the top local offerings is forthcoming). In order to spare our readers the pain of reading through yet another list that tries too hard to impress with obscure releases or toe the party line on Stereogum / Pitchfork approved artists, we continue our personal decade-plus tradition of merely listing what we actually liked in 2008. That means that the albums below are the one we kept finding ourselves turning to when we wanted to kick back and enjoy some tunes. Sure, there was more artistically challenging stuff released this year than some of the selections below -- and we certainly do appreciate that sort of thing -- but our year end list reflects which music ultimately did for us what we think rock and/or roll is ultimately meant to do to any listener: it grabbed us by the heart and/or crotch and wouldn't let go.

Yep, we said it - Fall Out Boy's Folie à Deux, the band's fifth full length and third for a major, will change the way you think about the foursome from the northern 'burbs. If you let it, that is.

It's apropos that Milk At Midnight be featured on this installment of Rockin' Our Turntable since their new album, Less Love More Acid, is only physically available on vinyl. (Don't worry, it comes with a data disc of both WAV and MP3 files, or you can download a copy from their label, so you can still enjoy it without lugging around a portable record player.)