Sleater-Kinney made a great album (Call the Doctor) before drummer Janet Weiss came on board and it’s likely that they could make several more, despite her announced departure in July. Yet losing one of their most undeniable assets just before…
Album Review: Various Artists – “The Lion King: The Gift”
I don’t believe those that claim this album can be listened to as a completely separate “work of art” from the Disney remake. After all, every other track is an audio snippet from the film. It doesn’t let you forget…
Album Review: Big K.R.I.T. – “K.R.I.T. IZ HERE”
Big K.R.I.T. is getting some traction, and this fourth album from the Mississippi rapper has attained some measure of commercial success. Promoted by four singles of varying quality, it’s been marketed as a “sequel” to his 2010 mixtape K.R.I.T. WUZ…
Album Review: Hot Chip – “A Bath Full of Ecstasy”
Hot Chip have always had a streak of violence in them, most memorably in the title track of The Warning which warned: “Hot Chip will break your legs/Snap off your head/Hot Chip will put you down/Under the ground”. Of course,…
Album Review: Kate Tempest – “The Book of Traps and Lessons”
Because I like almost everything about Kate Tempest and her music/poetry (she won the Ted Hughes Award for poetry before she made her name as a rapper), I was less dismayed than usual to read early reviews of this album…
Album Review: Sebadoh – “Act Surprised”
They long ago abandoned the lo-fi aesthetic that made them famous, and Sebaoh’s latest is another set of slick rock songs. Whether that’s a good thing or not will depend on your level of saturation with modern alt-rock. Opener “phantom”…
Album Review: Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi – “There is No Other”
Rhiannon Giddens is a folk singer in the truest sense of the world: she spins yarns to music about ordinary American folk, tracing a lineage of suffering for her people that stretches right back to when they were slaves forcibly…
