“15 Step’s clattering beats, the unsettling electronic pulse behind House Of Cards - are pressed into the service of fantastic melodies: the closing Videotape proceeds at the pace of a Soviet state funeral, but the tune is so glorious, it sounds graceful rather than lethargic, dreamy rather than dreary. Radiohead sound like they’re enjoying themselves.” – The Guardian
“By turns danceable, blissed out romantic, familiar and new, it’s technologically and musically fascinating. Its juxtaposition of orga and mecha is one of its many well executed contradictions. Packed but sparse, thrilling, complex, innovative, simple. Without even a dud bar never mind a filler track, In Rainbows is more than any fan could hope for.” – Music OMH
“Much of the album is moved along by the sounds of ships’ horns and bells, gulls’ cries and flowing water. Björk moves leisurely into Asian and African landscapes (famed kora player Toumani Diabate contributes there), as well as the tribal trip-hop that’s become one of her touchstones. Though the powerful yet childlike voice and yearning lyrics are much the same, the experience is more earthly than mystical this time.” – LA Times
“Despite the much-anticipated hook-up with super-producer Timbaland, this is not Björk ‘going hip-hop’ or having a late-breaking pop reinvention – ‘Volta’ is something much grander. It’s an album defined by its identity crisis – dizzily slipping, as it does, from metal-electronica one moment to spooky chamber-pop the next. Its range is stunning, but then you’d expect nothing less from an album that features a 10-piece, all-female Icelandic brass section, the drummer out of Lightning Bolt and the deep texture of Antony Hegarty’s voice (he appears on two tracks, including the stunning ‘My Juvenile’).” – NME
“A fifteen-minute instrumental opus that glides through reggae-tinged post-punk guitar shots, glistening keyboard runs, opaque sheets of ambience, and intricate maps of interlocking rhythmic elements, it sets a high bar for the 40 minutes of shimmering, reverbed, hypnotic, and fabricated (in the best possible way) postpunk / disco that follows. There’s a little bit of dub, a smidgen of Krautrock, a whole lot of post-punk, and more than a touch of disco and early ‘90s British and European dance pop in West Coast, all handled beautifully and coalescing into something that, if not unique, is certainly laden with enough individual character as to stand out. Studio’s debut album is one of the best of both 2006 and 2007.” – Stylus Magazine
“Their debut provides a solid argument that fun, uplifting, danceable music isn’t necessarily at odds with trail blazing experimentation.” – Coke Machine Glow
“A Night At The Ritz is a fairly impressive debut that features track after track of excellent pop hooks and melodies that are sure to become engrained in your mind after only a few listens and often jump back and forth between sounds of the past and present.” – Absolute Punk
“Songs like “Dominoes” and “The Big Bang Jump” won’t appeal to the people who have had their arms crossed at shows for the last five years, but the people who like to uncross their arms and shake their asses will appreciated these pop gems.” – The Tripwire
Here’s what I wrote on iTunes: “a glittery driving colorful beat of an EP. lyrics are clever & unique and the vocals show signs of a star on the rise, in a just world of course. try keeping these songs out of your head, it’s impossible, and each listen reveals a whole new level of melodies you missed the last time. is it a concotion of curve, method man, bananarama, and just a dash of divine? perhaps.“
“Of all the dance-punk revivalists, !!! has been the most consistently interesting and challenging, not to mention the group most likely to fill the dancefloor on indie rock night. Not too many bands even in heyday of the initial wave of dance-punk released records as full of energy, intelligence, and ferocious funk as this.” – All Music Guide
“Any metaphor works, really; the guitars bleed with magma (fire and brimstone!), oozing blood (human offerings!), and of course, the shrill swipe of jet engine blades (vrrrrrrr!). And yet, and yet, for all the noise there are songs underneath. Almost laughably poppy ones in fact, with a refreshingly nineteen-eighty-something holographic quality.” – Lost at Sea
“A Place to Bury Strangers are a precious gift for those of us who will always carry a torch for the delirious rush of pre-1990s Jesus and Mary Chain, and the glistening chill of late Joy Division. Add in a little Cure circa Pornography and this debut is quite a treat.” – Pop Matters
“The artwork of Panda Bear’s third solo album is full of clues. The front sleeve is a paddling pool fantastically packed with children and animals (tiger, seal, gorilla, leopard, koala and, yes, panda). Inside the booklet, there are further brightly coloured photographs: kids on stilts facing a sky mad with fruit bats and flying foxes, a boy in a kilt and a crocodile head-dress dancing a jig, a pigtailed girl riding a gondola through a sky swirling with feathers. These images set you up for music that’s tribal, ecstatic yet eerie, brimming with child-like wonder. And that’s exactly what Person Pitch delivers.” – Observer Music Monthly
“60s influences are numerous throughout Person Pitch, from its soaring psychedelic vocal melodies to shimmering layers of guitar and percussion, the panoply of clicks, whirrs and other less readily identifiable blurs of sound that streak its length situate Panda Bear’s fourth solo album squarely in post-techno territory. The result is an album as rich as it is strange.” – BBC
“Our Love to Admire fleshes out the dark edges of Interpol’s sound to create a polished, muscular-sounding record that teems with life and bristling potency.” – Observer Music Monthly
“Our Love To Admire borrows much of its nervous energy from several obvious English forebears: Echo And The Bunnymen, The Cure, Kitchens Of Distinction, Psychedelic Furs and early Banshees, as well as Joy Division and The Chameleons. The key difference is that Interpol, as Americans, aren’t hampered by the low-key provincialism that stifled the ambitions of much British post punk. Our Love To Admire – their first album for a major label – suggests that Interpol are primed and ready to complete the leap into the arena circuit, a move that Echo And The Bunnymen, for instance, never felt comfortable with. It’s a majestic, grandiose, machine-tooled album, subtly orchestrated with gothic pianos and doomy organs.” – Uncut
“this is an utterly on-target wartime opine, a masterful musical guerrilla action that finds Blur’s Damon Albarn, the Clash’s Paul Simonon, Verve guitarist Simon Tong, and Afrobeat godhead Tony Allen breaking ranks to create a near-perfect sonic snapshot of London under Blair’s blowback blitz.” – Austin Chronicle
“The music, however lean, is the most poignant vision Albarn’s devout Anglo-centrism has offered: a beautifully dark, boozy, overcast dream of London, cinematic in its scope and careful in its craft.” – Village Voice
Or maybe it was said best by my friend who manages this band: “I Love You Airlines is PT Barnum’s most opium-inspired kaleidoscopic carousel, replete with 2000 chartreuse bells and sapphire whistles, 13 sousaphone blowing cheetahs and 1 accordion playing Ganesh…it’s 3001 brass pipes bubbling and belching the symphony a caffeine-fueled Phil Spector composed on the Mighty Wurlitzer that appeared in last night’s dream dreamt by Dali, dictated by Roald Dahl: the sonically-glimmering soundtrack to a Post-modern filth fantasia starring Dawn Davenport sashaying through the ghetto of the East Village dripping head to toe in diamond-studded Chanel, shot in glorious Technicolor by John Waters and projected on a huge screen suspended high above Cinderella’s Castle in Walt Disney World on a balmy, 72 degree night in late November….the southwesterly breeze carrying fuchsia flamingo feathers down to the Gulf of Mexico…and beyond…..“
VERY HONORABLE MENTION
Air France : On Trade Winds EP Blonde Redhead : 23 Burial : Untrue Celebration : The Modern Tribe Dinosaur Jr. : Beyond GusGus : Forever Kristin Hersh : Learn to Sing Like A Star The Horrors : Strange House MyMy : Songs for the Gentle Ulrich Schnauss : Goodbye Sigur Ros : Hvarf/Heim White Rabbits : Fort Nightly
SOME GREAT TRACKS, BUT JUST A FEW
Battles : Mirrored The Birthday Massacre : Walking with Strangers Black Rebel Motorcycle Club : Baby 81 Ghostland Obervatory : Paparazzi Lightning Wolf & Cub : Vessels
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