If I were to tell you that today I had a red wine with my fancy seafood platter, any traditionalist might feel confused, aghast, maybe even a little bit betrayed. If I were to tell you that while this feast amassed, I was listening to structurally articulate dreamy synth music, the whole scenario just seems
The new Wild Nothing EP, Empty Estate, takes a minute of getting used to. It’s seven songs recorded in ten days, and it translates that feeling of being swept up rather quickly before regaining some footing in the familiar. Here we have Jack Tatum experimenting with some new sounds while remarking on how he felt in
Synesthesia is defined as “The production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body” and couldn’t be a better title for Hands’ debut full-length. This album has been a long time coming for Geoffrey Halliday and Ryan Sweeney, who began
All good things must come to an end, and a few years ago, the lo-fi indie rock project, Mellowdrone, parted ways to their fans dismay. But when one door closes, another opens up, and after spending some time pondering if he even wanted to make music anymore, the group’s former bassist/vocalist Jonathan Bates discovered the
Aesop Rock and Kimya Dawson made an album together. Weird, right? After a year of working on the record, the duo released Hokey Fright on Rhymesayers Entertainment under the name The Uncluded. In the first moments the abrasive tonnage of Aesop Rock, the moniker of Ian Matthias Bavitz, coupled with the excessively cute and intentionally juvenile sounds of
It’s 2013, and it’s time to face the fact that deep down, everyone’s got a hipster streak when it comes to listening tastes. We’re a bunch of jaded post-modernists–obsessed with avoiding cliché, experts at calling out the shortcomings of others’ handiwork. Bubblegum pop? Boy bands? What kind of hack would ever support this drivel? But
The past two years have been kind for Detroit-based indie pop duo Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. Known as much for their quirky name as their luscious harmonies, the duo of Josh Epstein and Daniel Zott have come a long way from their days of bouncing around the Detroit music scene. Their recent work, Patterns EP, is more
An opening guitar line that’s totally like that one song you loved from your favorite alternative early 90s band is how “Not Ready To Stop,” the opening track on Ghosts Go Blind first hits. It’s like your most comfortable flannel shirt that you still have in the closet. But after the initial throwback comfort, it
There are certain buzz words that appear over and over again in album reviews: fuzzy, crunchy, dreamy, maturing, etc. They’re not genres, necessarily, but they’re words used to almost categorize a band’s sound down to Kingdom-Phylum-Class-Order-Family-Genus-Species status. They let you know exactly what you’re getting into before you even open the CD or, as is
What happens when Tim Nordwind of OK Go and Drea Smith of He Say/She Say bond over post-punk and ‘80s Manchester bands? The lucid and dreamlike originality of the unlikely combination is an indie-pop outfit emerging under the moniker of PYYRAMIDS. Then add to the equation the mixing genius of Dave Fridmann (MGMT, Flaming Lips) and