Ay yi yi, these are stressful times! What with cold war déjà vu, climate change jamais vu and Congressional healthcare doodoo freaking us out, we could use the indie soft-rock of Nightlands to help ease us down. On “Lost Moon,” a winsome lap steel summons the mellow multitracked vocals of Nightlands mainman Dave Hartley, whose […]
To discuss the album reissues of Finnish black metal band Oranssi Pazuzu, I’m joined by Funky Donny Fred, veteran of a thousand psychic wars. LN: As I live and breathe, it’s Funky Donny Fred! Say, is that a new tattoo on your neck? FDF: Yes it is: “I walk the left hand path”. LN: Hmm, […]
2017 is barely three months old — too soon for a “best album of the year” status report? Because I’m thinking The Navigator by Hurray For The Riff Raff is the year’s first serious contender. Bandleader Alynda Segarra has steered this New Orleans-based ensemble for over eight years through a wide-ranging folk-rock sound enlivened by […]
Consider the dilemma of the established alternative musician: as fans’ ears for earlier adventures gets recast as “adult-oriented,” the artist can go on pushing boundaries and hope audiences keep up, or she can return to the sounds she’s most identified her with. If the latter, the question then: is this return done in good faith […]
Retired Pulp frontman and emeritus nerd heartthrob Jarvis Cocker returns with a new album to seduce adventurous listeners: Room 29, a collaboration with Canadian composer Chilly Gonzales. This concept album opens onto Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont, where the rich and famous have long indulged their decadences as both escape from and service to the Hollywood celebrity […]
As 80s music transcends the level of nostalgia to undergird so much of today’s pop, electronic, dance, and indie rock music, an intriguing album reissue arrives saturated with the sounds and stylistic shifts of 30 years ago. The World Is A Ball, originally released in 1986, is arguably the “lost” album by Martha and the […]
So it’s 2017, which means we’ll be drowning all year in “it was 40 years ago” milestones commemorating punk rock’s year zero. As cynical, seen-it-all punks ask what has become of their beloved genre’s musical legacy, the more open-minded will acknowledge it endures these days in the bones of extreme heavy metal, as demonstrated by […]
Go ahead and call her “Stella,” but you’re gonna want to figure how to type the Greek sigma character if the new ∑tella album becomes your sudden obsession like it has for me. [Ed.– Try typing option-w.] “Watch Me Dive” showcases her characteristically lean, concise electro-pop. True, hundreds of synth-based acts work the same musical […]
Through her band King Woman, Kristina Estfandiari presents a new, necessary icon of female power for the current day. Informed but unfulfilled by a prior legacy of women’s music (folk’s room of one’s own, the greater visibility permitted by alt-rock, riot grrrl’s clarion rage), Estfandiari magnifies an intimate voice of pain through suffocating blocks of […]
I’ll be honest: it takes a hell of a lot these days for indie-folk music to get me out of my chair. Just because someone can fingerpick chords on a steel-string acoustic guitar and boost the recording echo with GarageBand software doesn’t mean they’ve created music that is “lonesome” or as “pure” as the pre-industrial […]