Album Reviews

I suspect simply listening isn’t the best way to experience this music. Live appearances have the band performing in robes and masks, generating something far more theatrical and dynamic. But with the tour to promote this album currently on hold, you’re stuck with your own mental movies that these sounds conjure up, as we await their live return.

Sure, Nostalgia’s addictive melodies retro dive into the future, but SPECTRES, just like the cover art displays, achieve it with grace, form, and beauty. 

Recalling the punkish melody and garage jam of Chicago’s The Ponys, Floored Faces dive hard into rock’s blustering euphoria. Instant grabbers, “Out Here”, “On The Leave”, and “Walk Away” all possess a heroic slam of “damn, I wish my band sounded this good”

Dwyer’s chops are astoundingly grand and his reach is paved by Bukowski’s swampy bass attacks and Swenson’s taut battery bestowing Path Of Brutality as a pummeling, stoned blues escapade draped in low risk macabre.

Farmer’s choice of chorus lifts, imagery, and instrumental streamers are freshly picked. If you can hear the smirk on Farmer’s face, it’s only because others have passed on the discount, equally sweet, marred produce.

The album closes with a track written by Seattle guitarist James Howard, “Path Of The Mystic.“ A funky Go Go beat dance number with a power of positive thinking message for everyone “to be the change you want to see in the world,” that Nicole explains in the liner notes , for her encapsulates the essence of the entire album.

This is a band of great passion. The closing track, “Doing Great! Never Better!,” a plea to not be left alone, is sweet in its vulnerability. It also belies Rivera’s declaration “I don’t know if I care” in the sprightly-titled “All Choices End in Death.” Nonsense. Anyone who sings with such intensity has to care. If you like powerful, pummeling rock, check out this album. And don’t overlook the lyrics. 

Listening to Causal Loop feels serendipitously larger amid the current pandemic and with so many unknowns, a welcomed salve.

It’s a glorious musical stew that draws on psychedelic rock, glam, a bit of hard rock here, a dash of pop rock there, all swirled together and reworked to come out all shiny and new.

Treason gets you energized, but in these imperiled times you also don’t want to let that energy go to waste. Want to send those smiling faces on the album’s cover packing? The power rests with you.

“Gigaton” has a double meaning as the title of Pearl Jam’s 11th studio album. The literal meaning refers to a weight of one billion tons. But it’s also a reference to the band’s work ethic; they do, indeed, gig a ton.

On her third full length album, Lightning Strikes Twice, released in March of 2020, she and her backing band, whom she has given the moniker Jo Mama, deliver nine original songs covering a variety of styles from Country to Swing and Pop Rock, Blues and Gospel with one common thread the sound of “pure soul.“

Possibly her most steamy affair yet, SassyBlack continues to find news ways of making sparse melodies and production cosmically outsized and crafted, with a keen roll of intimacy amid the various channels and liftoffs she has patented and sourced all on her own. A goddess in the truest sense.

Part of a Larger Conversation’s lush vignettes work intentionally as a unified whole or disintegrated into flickering mysteries. Whether Conversations receives proper attention or is just splashed, as another puddle while community adjusts is understandable; these are strange times, but Shallow Water is deeper than the name suggests.

Eamon understands you’re busy and while he’ll certainly remind you of a handful of recordings from yesteryear he doesn’t sound like many other contemporaries. Amid the influences abounds the wonderment of someone making work of sounding classic without being overtly nostalgic.