Listening to Sparks is not at all unlike seeing a hippopotamus at the zoo. Each entity is big, kind of weird looking, even weirder sounding, and yet likable, in a way that your conscious mind might no…
Album Review: Brand New – “Science Fiction”
Consider the career of any accomplished artist and you’ll find they’ve been held, at some time or another, to a fickle standard: growth. This most unruly of moving goal posts plagues artists, of any m…
Album Review: Baio – “Man of the World”
Since 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City, an emotionally nuanced album of myriad sonic moods, Vampire Weekend has been on something of a hiatus, but not one in which the band as individuals have exper…
Album Review: Jeff Tweedy – “Together At Last”
It’s inherently unsettling to hear the words “I dreamed about killing you again last night.” Such is the tone set from the get-go on Jeff Tweedy’s Together At Last. The album is effectively a retrospe…
Album Review: Portugal. The Man – “Woodstock”
There are few, if any, other single events in American pop music more venerated than the original Woodstock Music and Arts Fair. As a watershed moment in the cultural revolution of the 1970s, occurrin…
Album Review: Rise Against — Wolves
In the summer of 2004, a little over a year after the United States invaded Iraq, Rise Against released their major-label debut, Siren Song of the Counter Culture. The band had made a name for themsel…
Album Review: Dan Auerbach – “Waiting on a Song”
Artists have a habit of creating art about art. No matter who and no matter what the medium, it seems that something about creating art turns the act itself into a potent muse. We can pick any number …