review – cyanide breathmint

Tramp is the album that I listened to the most all year long, the album I kept turning back to, woke up with it in my head, wanted to hear it again and again. Sharon Van Etten has expanded her palette a bit, using more electric guitar and intensity, but still maintaining her beautiful hypnotic […]

Spiritualized just continues dropping albums full of blues, feedback, gospel, drugs, love, pain, intensity, the sun, repetition, catharsis. None of these things are new, this their seventh album. This is pure Spiritualized, striking and affecting, a brilliant mix of simple parts making something more. This is what they do. (This is, though, the worst album […]

In reading through the lyrics of The Haunted Man in the liner notes, I noticed that there are a lot of exclamation points. “Thank god I’m alive!” “Let the perfume drip, let it rise!” “I’m in bloom! Oh yeah!” “Baby throw your head back! Let your hair down!” “And we’re only but a second away!” […]

This, I believe, is essentially a Trembling Bells record–they wrote and performed almost everything, but the addition of Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy as a singer on the songs is quite cool. Trembling Bells’ singer is like the opposite of Billy–soaring British female vocals mix with Billy’s earthy Americana voice. And together, they bring an edge to […]

I wrote about this infectious album earlier this year. Cate Le Bon “Cyrk” Cate Le Bon “The Man I Wanted”

David Byrne & St. Vincent made the nerdiest album of the year, which if you know anything of Byrne and Annie Clark is hardly a surprise. They created an idea first–horns!–and built off that, together. From what I’ve read, they traded lyrics back and forth too, finishing and adding lines, a true partnership. That said, […]

Ah I wanted to write a bit more about Hello Seahorse! But it’s late and I haven’t the time and I’ve already fallen off my countdown schedule so I’ll be quick. And besides, Hello Seahorse! is from Mexico, and they sing entirely in Spanish so I honestly have no idea what the songs are about […]