Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Released This Week: Salme Dahlstrom - The Acid Cowgirl Audio Trade

August 17, 2008 by Matthew Montgomery

Salme Dahlstrom - The Acid Cowgirl Audio TradeSalme Dahlstrom
The Acid Cowgirl Audio Trade
Kontainer Music, 2008

Salme Dahlstrom - “Superstar Crash” | download

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Electronically oriented pop music hits all the right spots for some people: Salme Dahlstrom, for those people, can’t be hitting too far off those. The Acid Cowgirl Audio Trade is full of interesting synthetic textures and sounds, but at some points, it lacks a bit of that important impact.

Other times, though, Dahlstrom demonstrates a nice understanding with the pop music she’s writing, and it’s those points that really define the record. While this certainly won’t be named electronic album of the year, it does feature some engaging tracks. Where Dahlstrom really succeeds is not her writing, though: Her vocals are straight from the style’s top shelf, shifting with some abandon between a sassy, in-your-face attitude and nicely harmonized standard modern pop.

Sure, The Acid Cowgirl Audio Trade isn’t the best album of the year, but Dahlstrom’s vocals will be enough for some to keep listening, and the writing, while fairly typical of pop-centric electronica, isn’t bad enough to drive away listeners.

Track Review: Joel Plaskett Emergency - “Fashionable People”

August 14, 2008 by Matthew Montgomery

Joel Plaskett EmergencyJoel Plaskett Emergency
Ashtray Rock
“Fashionable People”

Joel Plaskett Emergency - “Fashionable People” | download

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“Fashionable People,” named for the falsetto-inflected chorus line from this song, a track from 2007’s Ashtray Rock, is an entertaining romp in power pop that experiments with a variety of instrumentation styles to reach its easily listenable destination. Top it off with an entertaining video (embedded after the jump,) and you’ve got a song that sounds almost Weezerish (if I can coin a term, like all good music journalists) in its methods; however, there’s an unrestrained feel here that would place it above most recent efforts from the band Joel Plaskett undoubtedly drew some influence from.

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Review: Stereolab - Chemical Chords

August 13, 2008 by Matthew Montgomery

Stereolab - Chemical ChordsStereolab
Chemical Chords
4AD August 18, 2008

Stereolab’s made enough of a name for themselves by now that most releases will hit the radar of an assortment of music fans, especially those finding themselves attracted to the indie pop sound this bold outfit is known for producing so elegantly.

Stereolab - “Three Women” | download | preview at Beggars Group USA

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Track Review: Chris Cotton - “Going Home”

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August 12, 2008 by Matthew Montgomery

Chris CottonChris Cotton
The Big Sea
“Going Home”

Chris Cotton - “Going Home” | download

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“Going Home” is shocking in its immediacy: a track from Chris Cotton’s latest, due out September 2nd on Little Fish Large Pond Publishing. This vintage-style piece, recalling some of the earliest recorded American folk music, is a refreshing blast from distorted guitars and whining vocals. There’s something strangely enthralling about anachronistic music, isn’t there?

Track Review: The Ritz - “It’s The…” from The Night of Day

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August 12, 2008 by Matthew Montgomery

The Ritz - The Night of DayThe Ritz
The Night of Day
“It’s The…”

Content warning: Lyrics involve use of the ever-ominous “f” word. I don’t mind.

The Ritz - “It’s The” | download

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My first thought, after hearing this track from the debut album from The Ritz? I was impressed, honest. The combination of bass-heavy beats with string samples and a nice use of stereo rapping (Elliott Smith influence, maybe? Likely not.) is fairly evocative and engaging. My only real complaint? The bass is mixed a bit too heavily, as it ends up slightly excessive and punchy on my well-balanced headphones (Sennheiser HD 485s, nothing too expensive,) distracting from the rest of the track, a well-mixed hip-hop introduction track.There’s nothing too adventurous about this track, but its efficient execution bodes well for the full release, due out August 19th.

Review: The Luke Mulholland Band - Further

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August 11, 2008 by Matthew Montgomery

further_album120.jpgThe Luke Mulholland Band
Further
2008

The Luke Mulholland Band opens their 2008 release Further with a nice drive, but about 13 seconds in, I realized something: I’ve heard all this before. Not these exact lines or chord progressions — I think — but as competent as this group might be, fronted by a young guitarist currently attending the Berklee College of Music, there’s not a lot here that’s honestly original to catch the ears of interested listeners.

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Released This Week: Inquiet - Inq Beyong

August 9, 2008 by Matthew Montgomery

Inquiet - Inq BeyongInquiet
Inq Beyong
Brother Sister Records, August 15, 2008

Inquiet - “Fresh Flesh” | download

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Inquiet is an experimental pop group from Australia: That’s not a phrase you hear too often in many musical circles, especially those in the northern hemisphere. That’s got little to nothing to do with the musical quality here, to be honest.

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Released This Week: The Telepathic Butterflies - Breakfast in Suburbia

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August 8, 2008 by Matthew Montgomery

The Telepathic ButterfliesThe Telepathic Butterflies
Breakfast in Suburbia
Rainbow Quartz, 2008

The Telepathic Butterflies - “Telescope” | download

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One thing is made clear from the opening track of Breakfast in Suburbia: The Telepathic Butterflies (what a name!) are rooted in a 1960s pop aesthetic, their apparent influences a combination of the usual suspects: The Beach Boys and The Beatles, most notably, with a nice dose of surf rock playing out in the guitar tones. There’s enough of a psychedelic inflection in the music produced by the duo that citing Barrett-era Pink Floyd wouldn’t be completely off the mark, either.

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Review: Aviary Ghost - Memory is a Hallway

August 7, 2008 by Matthew Montgomery

Aviary Ghost - Memory is a HallwayAviary Ghost
Memory is a Hallway
Self-released, 2008
Aviary Ghost - “Somewhere Else” | download

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There are times that self-releasing an album can be the best option for a band, especially given the many instances of hot-air blowing by music industry personnel — and it’s not just major labels that have been known to play the game in miscreant ways. Sometimes, though, artists just don’t want to deal with the hassle of marketing their release, preferring to just put the music out for public consumption.

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Review: Conor Oberst

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July 27, 2008 by Matthew Montgomery

Conor Oberst’s self-titled release hit shelves August 5th.Conor Oberst
Conor Oberst
Merge Records, 2008

When I first heard Conor Oberst, I was an impressionable 14 year-old in grade nine. Following the recommendation of Bright Eyes by a friend whose musical interests I trusted (“Download ‘The City Has Sex With Itself,’ by Bright Eyes” he told me,) I engaged in musical exploration, learning of a great many styles, genres, and tepid over-classification, all of it new to me.

It wasn’t more than a year after my discovery that I ran into Conor Oberst’s first album he recorded and released: 1993’s cassette-only Water, an uncertain, less-confident release by the man that became, for all intents and purposes, Bright Eyes. He was a young 13 at the time of the release, and it was the first on Lumberjack, which later became the now-influential Saddle Creek Records.

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Review: A Faulty Chromosome — As An Ex-Anorexic’s Six Sicks Exit, …

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February 25, 2008 by Matthew Montgomery
A Faulty ChromosomeReleased Feb. 19, 2008; self-released.

A Faulty Chromosome, previously the subject of a Feb. 19 MusicGeek.org spotlight, is an unruly shoegaze group; while they do pull from a variety of influences — and it’s evident, it’s not just some blurb on the band’s MySpace — they create music that sounds as if it’s all essentially the same song, repeated ad infinitum. It’s not a bad song, though, just a bit on the repetitive side.

A Faulty Chromosome — “Jackie O” | download

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Review: Palmer’s Medic - In a House, Surrounded

February 20, 2008 by Matthew Montgomery

Palmer’s MedicPalmer’s Medic, an electronic recording project of a certain Seth David-Andrew Hubbard from southern Utah — Cedar City, Utah, to be precise about things — produces young, fresh music vaguely encapsulatable under genre titles of ambient house, trance, trip hop — terms of that nature. Ambiguous, isn’t it? But that’s the beauty of electronic music, I suppose. At any rate, from the get-go, In a House, Surrounded is an adventurous album: It doesn’t much fit under most specific categorizations (though some would argue that about all music, I am not one of those), which is a bit of a refresher from what’s come to be expected. Of course, most specific genres and descriptions are applied post hoc, so it may be a bit early to consider things of such a nature.

Palmer’s Medic — “M-900″ | download

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Review: Rings - Black Habit

January 30, 2008 by Matthew Montgomery

Rings / Photo by Kathy LoIt’s hard to classify Rings on first glance: This all-female band incorporates elements of experimental music, the modern pop tradition and Eno-inflected ambient, creating an ultimately unique style of music somewhere between the ranks of The Books, Broken Social Scene and Gorge Trio.

Invoking such diverse musical styles is difficult when creating experimental music, and Rings certainly managed to succeed in the matter. What’s interesting, though, is that these elements are not forefront endeavors; rather, a fair bit of examination is required to infiltrate the obscurity that surrounds the band and Black Habit.

Rings — “Mom Dance” | download

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Music Geek #3: Shoegaze, Famicom-style — The Depreciation Guild offers synthesizers with lush guitar work

January 21, 2008 by Matthew Montgomery

Matthew Montgomery wears funny glasses in a Cedar City, Utah park.In the time since the writing and subsequent posting of my previous column, in which I probed for quality shoegaze, I have been offered a small variety of options by which I might discover more of this music I’ve found myself so enamored with.

First, I must offer my appreciation to those who answered my call; the suggestions have been greatly appreciated, and I’m putting effort into exploring these artists more.

In my own search, I’ve found some interesting things. The first is a group I discovered not terribly long after admitting to the internet that I was — and still am — on the clueless side of things as far as proper shoegaze is concerned. The group, The Depreciation Guild, is composed of two musicians and a certain device entertainment-happy children in the mid-1980s and, indeed, most anyone who’s spent time in the confines of American popular culture: the Famicom, or, as it’s more popularly known in the United States, the Nintendo Entertainment System.

The Depreciation Guild - “Butterfly Kisses”

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Antarctica Takes It! - The Penguin League

July 20, 2007 by Scott Mathews

Antarctica Takes It!, from Santa Cruz, California, is a fairly easy group to figure out — a true indie pop project, they put their sound up for examination with their first — and self-released — album, The Penguin League.

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