Album Review: Smith Westerns, Soft Will

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Here we are, in the warmth of summer. With July commencing, most often summertime evokes a severe longing for those bittersweet romance harmonies best paired with endless nights driving around, crying out lyrics, counting the days and nights until school starts again. This season is stacked, as The Smith Westerns have dropped the very album

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Album Review: GRMLN – Empire

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Late last year, Yoodoo Park made his debut with Explore, a seven-track EP comprising dreamy, lo-fi tunes recorded in the young artist’s garage. The haunting melodies and shoegaze-tinged instrumentation of this release quickly categorized the Japanese born Californian with other bedroom pop projects, but Park’s freshman full-length, Empire, is set to disprove that notion. Aspiring

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Album Review: Thundercat, Apocalypse

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Sometimes great music comes from obscure places. Other times it’s so obvious that the music is overwhelmingly amazing that impossible to put your finger on the pulse of why that’s the case. After a few years of working behind the scenes with L.A.-based producer/maestro Flying Lotus, bassist extraordinaire Thundercat (not to be confused with the

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Album Review: Surfer Blood, Pythons

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Surfer Blood might have set all future expectations a bit high for themselves with their 2010 debut album Astro Coast. The band’s immediate knack for hypnotizing hooks (“Floating Vibes” has been stuck in my head for about three years now) and a surprise cleanliness coupled with generally buzz guitars was impressive — very impressive. That

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Album Review: Splashh, Comfort

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Let us extend Splashh a warm welcoming to the world of full-length albums. The East London quartet released Comfort, its debut album, on June 4 (in the U.S.; September 2 in the UK and Europe) on Kanine/Luv Luv Luv Records. Comfort reads like a debut album, with all the blooming energy and fresh innovation that

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