Things crackle to life on this short disc, goofily titled “Extra Virgin Olive Oil,” by layering Peter Seay’s great, big, grinning voice over his vintage, red dirt-crunching guitars (reinforced by fellow riffing ace AJ Sadeghi), which lick their way across the opening track, “Aborigine.” “EVOO” makes for a fun, heavily stoned 18 minutes of music, […]
Matt Carney
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WU LYF – Go Tell Fire to the Mountain
Those two distinct features are the mixture of organ with soft guitar notes and the guttural, unnatural vocal grunts that they’re set behind. With the album’s well-timed pacing and all the shout-along choruses, “Go Tell Fire To The Mountain” is easily one of the best, most cathartic surprises in indie rock this year. Not a […]
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Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know
So much of the 21-year-old’s third LP, “A Creature I Don’t Know,” comes in styles more nuanced and technically difficult to perform than pure, simple folk, while it simultaneously avoids lazily dipping into other stylistic offshoots for guidance or song structure. Stories are told here in country, British folk, American folk and plenty of other […]
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Wilco – The Whole Love
The latter eschews much of that melody for a grittier rock and prog sound, and a wider thematic range, lyrically. Linking the two is the band’s universally beloved and critically lauded 2002 opus, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” but, save for Jeff Tweedy’s most devout, wide-eyed followers, few find themselves with an equal appreciation for both albums. […]
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Kashing in
Tim Kasher writes songs the way any author of good fiction tells a story. After first establishing a base within his own experiences, he exaggerates and embellishes, fabricates and reimagines until a good song manifests. Not always does the character closely resemble the singer, but even those closest to him can’t tell you for certain. […]
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Gum — Make It Sound New
With guidance from Trent Bell and the equipment in his Bell Labs Recording studio, the young group’s debut (they’re all around college-aged or fresh out of school) nicely juxtaposes a certain sonic wisdom against the songwriting of messy, emotive, mid-20s lives. Download the song “Ooo La La” for free. The album swings with John Baber’s […]
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Terius Nash – 1977
• Beyoncé, “1 + 1” (critically lauded, album’s certified platinum after topping the Billboard 200 for two consecutive weeks) and “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” (Topped four separate U.S. charts, four times platinum, guaranteed to be played at every wedding until eternity ends)• Mariah Carey, “Touch My Body” (Jack McBrayer-starring video boasts more […]
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Soundcheck: ‘This Machine’
Well, yeah, he did. But his legacy carries on well after Huntington’s disease claimed his body on Oct. 3, 1967, and not just in the folk genre he mastered. His legacy is one that was hell-bent on tearing down authoritarianism and replacing it with tolerance and understanding. “Woody was a social conscience as much as […]
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The Weeknd — Thursday
Far from it, in fact. “Thursday”’s a terrific R&B record, creeping and grinding along at a pace appropriate for a sequel to the menacing, borderline-nihilistic “Balloons.” What the second album (Tesfaye promised a trio by the end of the year — all to be downloaded online, for free) lacks is the cloak of enigma that […]
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Superchunk – Foolish
Well, here’s an album reissue originally produced about 20 some-odd years later far more appropriate for the consumer. Guitar-wise, a lot changes in two decades, and Superchunk were at the head of the pack when it came to ’90s riff-driven rock ’n’ roll. Inspired by the ’80s punk do-it-yourself-and-work-effin’-hard-at-it ethic, “Foolish” was recorded amid a […]