Last night I subway’d into Polish Town Brooklyn to see Dinosaur Jr. and Blood on the Wall at the Warsaw, my first New York show. I’m aware that Dinosaur has had a reputation for being very loud since 87, so I was disappointed to have forgotten earplugs, but I figured I’d roll with it. Now, […]

Monster Movie
All Lost
Label: Graveface
Release Date:05/16/2006

Bands from the UK are the masters of the dreamy and melancholy synth. Think about it: you got your Depeche Modes, Joy Divisions, and coutless other 80s bands with synth-lines so gorgeous and poignant it makes want to sit in my room alone, in the dark, smoking cigarettes, and staring […]

M. Ward
Post-War
Label: Merge
Release Date:08/22/2006

If you’re looking for the next “folk hero” you might want to check this out.
Described as “hushed and weathered” M. Ward’s follow up album to Transistor Radio, Post-War is certainly not his first, and most defiantly not his last, to be correct it’s his fourth. So soothing, it’s something […]

Darc Mind
Symptomatic of a Greater Ill
Label: Anticon
Release Date:08/29/2006

I believe I was 17 when I first heard Darc Mind. As I recall it was on a DJ S&S mixtape that I picked up at Southern Fried Funk in Nashville along with some fat caps and a new hoodie. There it was, sandwiched between a […]

Parkway Drive
Killing With A Smile
Label: EpitaphRelease Date:08/22/2006

I’m not even going to lie, I would be way into this if it were 1998 or whatever year it was when bands like Poison the Well were hot, but now it’s 2006 and there are so many of these bands circling around and […]

Ayatollah
Listen
Label: Sound ChronRelease Date:08/08/2006

Someone said that real bad boys move in silence. In the case of Ayatollah, an underrated producer who continues to put in work, this ghetto adage rings true. Ayatollah has worked with the likes of Rakim, Vast Aire, Cormega, Ghostface, Mos Def, and several indie and mainstream […]

The Green Arrows
4-Track Recording Session
Label: Alula
Release Date:02/14/2006

Apparently, the Green Arrows ran Zimbawe in the 70s. Not literally, they never held political office, but they were very popular. The international label Alulu Records has selected 20 tracks, 10 from the mid-70s “Chipo Chiroorwa” LP and 10 hand-picked cuts […]

Eluvium
When I Live By the Gardern and the Sea
Label: Temporary Residence
Release Date:08/22/2006

Only Matthew Cooper could take a sample from Tom Hanks’ 1989 vehicle The ‘Burbs and paste it into a song in a convincing manner. Cooper does just this on “As I Drift Off,” the second song on the new Eluvium EP, When I Live […]

Jim Noir
Tower of Love
Label: Barsuk
Release Date:08/08/2006

I don’t often get to use the word “rollicking”, but it describes “Tower of Love” perfectly. Most of the songs on the record are propelled by the most devastatingly bouncy bass this side of funk and that time long ago when rock and roll meant toe-tapping rhythm. It’s a […]

Candi Staton
His Hands
Label: Astralwerks
Release Date:04/04/2006

What is Soul? Like the term Indie, it means many things to many people, and the proposed definitions and parameters often contradict themselves. Such is the flaw of genrefication, especially when it branches out to non-musical realms such as fashion, culture and society. Terms become weighed down and […]