April 7, 2017 / Polyvinyl 8.5 (April 13, 2017) "The world's best American band." Quite a boastful moniker, is it not? I'm just going to put it bluntly: White Reaper are not at all what they describe themselves as. Not in quality and certainly not in publicity. In fact, I hadn't even heard of them … Continue reading White Reaper – The World’s Best American Band →

February 24, 2017 / Undertow 8.1 (April 2, 2017) I fucking hated them with every fiber of my being. It was 2005, I was barely even nine years old, yet I could say with absolute certainty at the time that I absolutely abhorred them (a nine-year-old version of the word, of course). I didn't know … Continue reading Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – The Tourist →

March 24, 2017 / P.W. Elverum & Sun 9.7 (March 27, 2017) Death is real.      Sometime in early 2002 or so, I was in Willowbrook, Illinois. I was only five years old at the time, and was dealing with mixed emotions of joy at having finally started life at an actual grade school, the … Continue reading Mount Eerie – A Crow Looked At Me →

March 17, 2017 / Matador 8.6 (March 24, 2017) Excuse me for this, but allow me to start this review by talking about a different album completely. Most of the time, when people talk about Spoon's legacy as a band, they're usually referring to one of their smoother, millennium records such as Kill the Moonlight and Ga Ga … Continue reading Spoon – Hot Thoughts →

February 26, 2002 / Interscope 9.8 (March 11, 2017) Interscope Records is a company that nowadays tends to center more around producing both some of the best current rap and R&B icons such as Kendrick Lamar, Jessie Ware, and Dr. Dre, as well as The 1975, Thirty Seconds to Mars, Eminem, Imagine Dragons, and other shitty … Continue reading …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead – Source Tags & Codes →

February 24, 2017 / Tiny Engines 7.1 (March 5, 2017) The roots of personal, depression-tinged indie rock can be traced back to Death Cab for Cutie's 2001 opus The Photo Album, and later 2003's Transatlanticism, where the underdog vein of the genre really took root. Absolutely nothing extravagant to be found; unassuming drums and bass, some guitar, mostly electric … Continue reading Wild Pink – Wild Pink →

February 21, 2017 / Domino 8.7 (February 26, 2017) Talk about a year of stylistic changes. First it was Cloud Nothings, and now it's Dirty Projectors following suit. As you might have expected, a lot of fans are not very happy about that. I do not consider myself one among them, however. Maybe I'm the … Continue reading Dirty Projectors – Dirty Projectors →

January 27, 2017 / Carpark 8.5 (February 21, 2017) Anyone who originally listened to and was subsequently blown away by Could Nothings' explosive 2012 opus Attack on Memory would likely groan with torment and anguish if they were to learn that, just five years after that, the band would have almost completely moved on from angst-filled noise rock/post-hardcore … Continue reading Cloud Nothings – Life Without Sound →

January 27, 2017 / Sister Polygon 9.1 (February 21, 2017) With the more recent and severe changes to our social and political climate, I predicted back in early November that it was only a matter of time before we started seeing a new wave of upset, politically-charged protest music coming onto the scene. Turns out, I … Continue reading Priests – Nothing Feels Natural →

(note: February 12, 2019) So as much as I'd like to, there's no way I'm going to the trouble of editing and putting all the pictures and paragraphs in for a list of fifty albums, so instead I'm just providing a helpful link to the full list as published on RateYourMusic (which is a great … Continue reading Top 50 Albums of 2016 →