Records
METHOD MAN, GOSTFACE KILLAH, RAEKWON’S WU-MASSACRE
Def Jam Records
By Anthony Benigno
As hip-hop gets more and more ornery, there’s something refreshingly old-school about three of the greats working their magic over bare-bones beats. “Wu-Massacre” isn’t a proper Wu-Tang record, but it’s almost better that way; the Clan’s troubled ’07 album “8 Diagrams” faltered amongst reports of clashing egos, so having just Method [...]
SHE & HIM’S VOLUME TWO
Merge Records
By Sedera Ranaivoarinosy
When actresses suddenly decide they want to sing, there are legitimate reasons to worry. It’s easy to try to make profit off a prominent personality, even by having them do something they might not be great at.
Zooey Deschanel has always sang; her goal when studying drama in college was to do musical [...]
DROPKICK MURPHYS’ LIVE ON LANSDOWNE, BOSTON, MA
Born & Bred Records
By Anthony Benigno
Like any punk band worth their salt, the Dropkick Murphys live are loud, rude, and crude, which makes for great mosh pit antics but has the unfortunate effect of drowning out their (well-constructed) music in sound and fury. So the most remarkable thing about their live record, “Live on Lansdowne, [...]
GORILLAZ’S PLASTIC BEACH
PARLOPHONE RECORDS, VIRGIN RECORDS
By Anthony Benigno
Three albums into their career and a lot of people still aren’t sure what exactly Gorillaz are. They should just be the guys who wrote “Feel Good, Inc.”…but they’re cartoons and therefore can’t really write anything. It’s possible that they’re just Damon Albarn’s pipe dream-version of a side project, but [...]
ANGELS & AIRWAVES’ LOVE
By Anthony Benigno
Life after fart jokes has been a bit of a rough one for Tom DeLonge; his second band Angels & Airwaves launched in 2007 with lots of fanfare (DeLonge predicted they would change rock n’ roll forever) but mixed results. Despite a minor hit or two, the grandiose-sounding group never found the same [...]
ADAM GREEN’S MINOR LOVE
FAT POSSUM RECORDS
By Sedera Ranaivoarinosy
Adam Green’s latest release, Minor Love, is an odd combination of kitsch 70s pop, folk, blues and DIY rock. And it’s wonderful.
The New York based singer-songwriter goes from writing Simon and Garfunkel-like tunes in “Don’t Call Me Uncle” to singing to compositions influenced by African music in “Goblin” while also incorporating [...]
JOHNNY CASH’S AMERICAN VI: AIN’T NO GRAVE
American Recordings/Lost Highway
By Sedera Ranaivoarinosy
American VI: Ain’t No Grave compiles the last leg of recordings Johnny Cash made with bearded super-producer Rick Rubin before his death in September 2003. Released a few days before what would have been his 78th birthday, the songs in this record are particularly relevant in a posthumous album.
Most of the [...]
BEACH HOUSE
By Abigail Devora
Ethereal vocals and poetic lyrics craft Beach House’s newly released Teen Dream. This is the third album by the Baltimore indie pop outfit comprised of Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally.
The duo creates calming compositions that put the listener at ease. In the band’s single, “Norway”, Legrand’s voice lightly layers itself on top of [...]
LIL’ WAYNE
By Anthony Benigno
Two years ago, Lil Wayne’s cockamamie plan to make a rock album called Rebirth has raised a lot of eyebrows and a lot of questions. Does Wayne know the first thing about how to make a rock song? And even if he does, would it be any good? And even if it were, [...]
ROB ZOMBIE
By Anthony Benigno
Ready to shock-rock like it’s 1999? The late ‘90s are long gone, but Rob Zombie, one of the patron saints of horror metal, is still hard at work pumping out kitschy, thumping arena-shakers with titles like “Werewolf, Baby!” and “Mars Needs Women.”
As if to illustrate his point, he’s named his latest record Hellbilly [...]
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