Category: Listen Up
REVIEW: The Bronx IV by The Bronx
After much anticipation, Los Angeles punk rock band The Bronx has broken a five-year musical hiatus and released its fourth studio album, The Bronx IV, which dropped today. The Bronx has been an underground staple in the hardcore scene for over a decade, and this record seems to pick right back up where the band…
Phone Chat with Cursive’s Matt Maginn
Here’s the deal. Cursive is wonderful. But you should already know that. I’ve been wanting to interview them since the launch of Vinyl, and finally…the stars have aligned, the fates have smiled upon me, and I got the chance to chat on the phone with bassist Matt Maginn (thank you, Samantha Gilder). And now you…
REVIEW: Circle Takes the Square’s Decompositions: Volume Number One
Circle Takes The Square‘s Decompositions, Volume Number One is a record that dissolves boundaries, a journey through time arriving at the crossroads of an epoch. Blurring the lines between human and animal, earthly and supernatural, linear and cyclical, and creative and destructive, Decompositions sounds like a fevered ayahuasca dream. Listening to Decompositions‘ stream of apocryphal…
REVIEW: Toro Y Moi’s Anything in Return
Chaz Bundick’s production skills are unmatched. His keen ear for beats, wiggling bass lines, and soulful vocal samples lends his music an immediately recognizable style, one that dabbles in disco, electro pop, and (gulp) chillwave*. That being said, what made Toro Y Moi a force to be reckoned with was his inclination to push his…
REVIEW: Snowbeast
Album: Snowbeast by Snowbeast The upsurge of intentional lo-fi music that has pervaded the Internet lately has usually been written by artists looking to emulate roughness and obscurity through the recording means now offered on everything from Ableton Live to Pro Tools. Without question, many of these faux-fi musicians seek the warmth of analog or…
REVIEW: Carpet of Horses’ It’s Only Light EP
An EP recorded in three different countries inevitably sets up some pretty massive expectations for a worldly and sophisticated sound, right? Get this: Carpet of Horses, a project fronted by Tobin Stewart, just released It’s Only Light – and though the EP was created in the earthly cities of Toronto, Berlin, and Tel Aviv, the…
REVIEW: Blink 182’s “Boxing Day”
So…blink-182 has come out with a new song, “Boxing Day,” off of their new holiday EP, Dogs Eating Dogs. Always exciting news for me when there is a new blink song. That being said, the song is pretty mundane. Not bad…just kind of forgettable. It’s a song to drive and not pay attention to. A…
REVIEW: The Last Tycoon’s Ballad of the Bloodstained Bible
Take a large dose of Sufjan Stevens circa Seven Swans, mix in a little Ryan Adams, and toss in just a dash of more current folk acts like Mumford and Sons, and you have “Ballad of the Bloodstained Bible”, The Last Tycoon’s newest single. John Gladwin, currently living in Athens, Georgia, ushers in the song…