review

Not long after putting on The Jigsaw Seen’s new album Bananas Foster for the first time, I got distracted and walked away until about halfway through the album. Upon my return, I had to check what was playing, because I thought for sure that what was playing was some late ’60′s British rock, perhaps some Kinks album I had somehow overlooked. But no, Bananas Foster was recorded in 2010 by the Jigsaw Seen and is the Los Angeles based band’s 4^th full length album since forming in 1988. That I had to check, speaks volumes about The Jigsaw Seen’s success in their retro rock stylings, showing that the album stands up to the classics by which it is influenced. Read More »

Body Talk Part 2 is the 6^th studio album and the 2^nd album in the Body Talk trilogy by Swedish dancehall queen Robyn.  The album has claimed instant success in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. While her Europop flair is a European club staple, Robyn has had a tough time breaking into the US music scene.  Body Talk Pt. 2 embodies Robyn’s vivid, unique, and innovative personality through the lyrics laid over synth-driven beats.The listener is taken on a wacky journey:  from the spacey sounds and lighter-than-air quality of her voice on the track “In My Eyes” to her sassy, pseudo-hip-hop flow in “Include Me Out”, “You Shoulda Known Better”, and “Criminal Intent.”  Read More »

The live album creates a gray area in the heart of a true audiophile. On one hand, you are exposed to the real, raw nature of the music free from edits and studio touch-ups; on the other hand, however, the haughty listener will shudder at the missed notes and off-key harmonies. With that said, the live aspect adds a whole new dimension to The Avett Brothers, and in Live, Volume 3, they add to their already well-textured songs a layer of rowdy background vocals from a well-versed, foot-stomping audience that more than covers up their musical miss-haps. Read More »

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin creates tantric pop. They are able to identify that climactic moment in a pop song, that fleeting micro-second that saves pop music from the over saturation by the Biebers in the world. Upon identifying it, though, they exploit it. They dissect that one instant into minutes. Stretching it out over repeating riffs and building handclaps they let us experience that perfect moment for longer than we ought to. And it feels pretty good.

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by Dominique Barron

I’m going to cut straight to the chase: Big Boi’s debut solo album, Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, is dope! No questions asked. I must admit that over the last few years I have pretty much been a hater of most new music released under the ‘hip-hop’ genre. This is due in part to my love-hate relationships with both T-Pain (it’s hard for me to continuously hate his music after he joined forces with Andy Samberg for “I’m On a Boat”) and Lil Wayne, coupled with my complete and utter dislike of artists such as Gucci Mane and Bangs. Over the course of these Read More »

by Mark Waterman

Michael Chabon, musing on the possibility of a totally original novel, said that “All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.” The same is true in the world of music. This review will not be able to tell you whether or not Jaill’s new album sounds like The Soft Pack has a crush on XTC, or of what it is “reminiscent.” Nor will it contain a lengthy analysis (with spreadsheets and percentages) that charts the band’s influences from their toddler days, when they were big into Raffi to their teenage years spent idolizing Joe Strummer. This review is, in fact, significantly more concerned with how the name of the band is pronounced (I alternately envision the word ‘jail’ pronounced with a Southern drawl or a Jamaican saying ‘ja! ill!’) and the fact that one of the members is named Ryan Adams. Read More »