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Jeff Mangum doesn’t want to taste your insides. He even said so on “Gardenhead (Leave Me Alone),” a track off both a 1993 cassette called “Hype City Soundtrack” and Neutral Milk Hotel’s debut long player, the 1996 “On Avery Island.” Three years separating the different versions allowed for considerable reworking and some fuller orchestration—a trait NMH would claim as a stylistic tattoo—including various brass and tiny instruments. What the time between an early nineties cassette and a semi-professional album during the decade’s second half allowed for was Mangum to trip along the music world, see that folks he’d already befriended were best as collaborators and then to redouble efforts with his chosen cohort. Read the rest of this entry »

Theophilus London was kicking around before the release of his 2009 digitally disseminated “This Charming Mixtape.” But even a few years back, positioning oneself as an unabashed lover of all musics within hip-hop seemed like old hat. And it was. What makes the New York-based MC an intriguing character, though, isn’t his music—it’s his weird attention to detail. The cover of “This Charming Mixtape” is London posed behind a camera, mimicking Elvis Costello’s “This Year’s Model.” He’s got it down to the awkwardly gesturing left hand. That sort of dedication to a music that isn’t generally connected to hip-hop’s lineage is admirable, if not indicative of the work’s buoyancy. Delving into the minutiae of the English language is what good rappers do. Read the rest of this entry »

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Catching early live gigs by Brooklyn’s Pterodactyl, which trekked the country with Parts and Labor a good ways back, onlookers were likely to be shoving against a tide of bounding dancers in spaces unfit for large crowds, or just looking on, kinda dumbstruck. The band’s first disc, a self-titled effort issued a few years into Pterodactyl’s career, belies the image of a bird surrounded by a swath of blue featured on its cover. Inside, tracks like “Three Succeed” and “Rampage 1” bristle with bassy abandon while sometimes-sensible melodies float out amid Joe Kremer’s lyrics. Read the rest of this entry »

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The fact that this Montreal-based band writes most of their material in French should not be a reason for alt-rock fans not to check them out. These guys have been packing venues with 3000-plus capacity back home while performing at much smaller rooms in the United States, but it’s just a matter of time before they are discovered by more mainstream audiences Stateside, in the same manner that folks like Manu Chao and Sigur Rós have before them.

Their sound is pretty aggressive. Guitarist and vocalist Louis-Jean Cormier sings and plays with great passion, and his band mates (keyboardist François Lafontaine, bass guitarist Martin Lamontagne, percussionist Julien Sagot, and drummer Stéphane Bergeron) keep up with gusto in tunes like the psychedelic-inspired  “Le  Pyromane” (from their recently released “Les Chemins De Verre”) or the grunge-y “Le Coup D’ Etat.” Read the rest of this entry »

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About the same time the world messed itself while listening to Panda Bear’s “Person Pitch” in 2007, Animal Collective’s other half went and issued an album with his now ex-wife, múm’s Kría Brekkan. Avey Tare’s “Pullhair Rubeye” didn’t attract the same sort of misguided attention as “Person Pitch,” and certainly not the kind of frenzy “Merriweather Post Pavillion” garnered a few years later when the world caught up with what Animal Collective had been doing for just about a decade. Read the rest of this entry »

During this time of year, music stores and their online counterparts get filled with rereleases that range from remastered versions of holiday classics from Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Tony Bennett, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra to not-so-great offerings from the likes of Christina Aguilera and even former Beatle Ringo Starr (who made a whole album about a decade ago). And then again there are those faux-humorous songs about daddy getting drunk at Christmas while grandma was run over by a reindeer. While some of these examples are genuinely enjoyable, many are better left where they belong—in the bargain bin.

But the truth remains that for many people a Christmas party is not quite complete without holiday music, so there definitely is always a market for these albums—even if we have been hearing them day in and day out at the local grocery store since late October. In spite of that sensory overload, some new
releases deserve to be checked out, especially for artists who decide to present these classics from a different perspective. Read the rest of this entry »

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You know how people describe the Beach Boys as a barber-shop quartet on acid? Yeah, not too apt an explanation of the band’s sound. But it’s meant in a positive light. Unfortunately, the same sort of reductive comparison can be used to wrap up songs like Ganglians’ “Things to Know,” off the band’s Lefse Records disc “Still Living.” The track, one of only a few lesser efforts issued here, possesses the same sort of sunny, wind-swept feel of Ganglians’ compositions from earlier discs. Read the rest of this entry »

The Lemonheads' Evan Dando

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While it’s clear that we don’t all have the same sort of disposable income as a few years back, strangely, though, there hasn’t been a dramatic drop-off of iWhatever sales of late. People are also buying cars, even prompting GM to hire back handfuls of day-laborers. The fact that the middle class is no more or less screwed than it was a decade or so back probably didn’t play into Evan Dando’s decision to pick up some backing players and hit the road with a live rendition of his band’s 1992 album “It’s a Shame About Ray.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Despite the regrettable formation of Fine Young Cannibals subsequent to the English Beat’s breakup, the earlier band became one of the most visible and successful ensembles from the 2-Tone era. Charting in the States didn’t provide for a prolonged career, but the Beat was able to squeeze out three long-players before going their separate ways. The first disc, 1980′s “I Just Can’t Stop It,” worked to incorporate roughly the same musical elements its 2-Tone peers dealt with. But instead of attempting to mash each disparate influence into a single song, the Beat went ahead and recorded some straight ska tunes, some in a reggae vein and even a pair of overtly punky numbers.
“Click Click” clocks in at a minute and a half, sports a frantic bassline and comes off as an effort the Police were aiming for, but incapable of summoning. The song’s pacing matches just about anything from punk’s first wave and is able to deal with burgeoning racism in the UK, particularly relevant to this multiracial band. Read the rest of this entry »

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Songs from Frankie Rose and the Outs aren’t any more tuneful than those from either the Vivian Girls or Dum Dum Girls. Of course, that latter group might only be meaningful to listeners as concerned with what their favorite musicians are wearing as they are with the music’s quality. But as a drummer for both those latter ensembles, in addition to the vastly more engaging Crystal Stilts, Frankie Rose has displayed a penchant for updated garage and girl-group stuff. Varying only slightly from band to band, it’d seem that the basic formula for these ensembles almost defies founding individual groups. Read the rest of this entry »