"The Golden Archipelago"
Shearwater
"The Courage of Others"
Midlake
"We Built a Fire"
Seabear
"The Desert of Shallow Effects"
Miles Kurosky
"2"
Retribution Gospel Choir
"Silver Soul"
Beach House
"Little Secrets"
Passion Pit
"Unhinged"
Eels
"Black Smoke"
Tindersticks
Pairing Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton with Cee-lo Green in Gnarls Barkley seemed natural. Setting him up with Beck, the Black Keys, MF Doom and Gorillaz made sense, too. But putting Danger Mouse in a recording studio with Shins frontman James Mercer is a less intuitive choice.
No one’s saying the Shins aren’t soulful in their own [...]
It’s entirely possible that no one has ever struck as perfect a balance between abrasion and accessibility as Jaguar Love does on its new album, “Hologram Jams” (Fat Possum).
The record is a bracing amalgam of pounding dance beats, huge candy-colored hooks and Johnny Whitney’s throat-shredding vocals — it’s like a glass-gargling derelict with a sequencer [...]
What Listen, Dammit, would really like to know is why Joanna Newsom felt it necessary to release so much music all at once.
“Have One On Me” (Drag City), the latest from the California indie-folk singer and harpist, is a two-hour affair (three discs in its physical form), full of the meandering pastoral meditations that dominated [...]
We’ve been pretty clear about how we think reviews-by-comparison are lame — we like to throw around big words like “reductive” and “fucking horseshit” — but our disdain holds especially true when the comparisons are just wrong.
So for the record, Listen, Dammit, hereby definitively states that kc quilty is not some reincarnation of grunge. (That [...]
After rigorous analysis, Listen, Dammit, has identified three key ingredients that make the music of Shellshag so darn appealing: stripped-down song structures, startlingly catchy hooks and a vibrant feeling of raw spontaneity, all wrapped in lo-fi sonics and laid upside your head.
It seems so simple, and indeed, each ingredient is common enough on its own. [...]
On its 2007 debut, “All Hour Cymbals,” the Brooklyn trio Yeasayer created an alternate-universe “Smile,” the one Brian Wilson would have made had he grown up amid the sands of the Arabian Peninsula, not Southern California. The album had a wayfaring, nomadic feel, its Middle Eastern melodies and tribal percussion hinting at what indie rock [...]
It took a few attempts before Midlake hit on a compelling direction for the follow-up to the band’s acclaimed 2006 album, “The Trials of Van Occupanther.”
Four years later, the Denton, Texas, group returns with “The Courage of Others” (Bella Union). It was worth the wait. Actually, that’s something of an understatement.
The band’s third album is [...]
It seems like Scout Niblett is one of those low-profile indie singers who’s just always been around. So it’s a surprise to learn that her new album, “The Calcination of Scout Niblett” (Drag City) is only her fifth long-player.
Recorded with the influential indie-rock producer Steve Albini, the album is a typically minimal outing, with spare [...]
Baltimore duo Beach House was mostly unknown before releasing its second album in 2008. That record, “Devotion,” got the band noticed in hipster circles, with Pitchfork raving about it in typically overwrought fashion. Even Rolling Stone gave it a positive notice. And it was a good album.
Their latest is a great album. “Teen Dream,” their [...]
There are two main dangers to naming your band after a classic album: First, it’s confusing. Second, you risk comparisons to the album in question, and unless your album is also a classic (hint: it’s probably not), you’re screwed.
This situation has cropped up twice in the past year, with bands called the Big Pink and [...]
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