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Album Review: White – White
In ancient China, a complex color symbology dictated appropriate attire. Yellow, a color to ward off evil, was associated with the imperial class and its servants. Red, a color for good luck, was traditionally worn at weddings. A man in a green hat was said to have an unfaithful wife. And white, the symbol of both purity and [...]
Album Review: Wooden Shjips – Dos
There’s the real world…and then there’s Wooden Shjips’ world. A land where a few extra “j”s never hurt anybody–in Wooden Shjips’ world, it’s always July, just slightly after sunset, on a Californian beach road. Seventy-five, slight breeze, and the acid is never brown. This is the setting recalled by the San Franciscan quartet’s aptly-titled second record Dos; and [...]
Rock History 101: The Clash’s “Red Angel Dragnet”
It’s a Friday night in the Loop, smack-dab in the last gasp of summer. The El station, all but deserted but for a few midnight commuters, throbs with the tidal hum of faraway trains and the mumblings of the homeless–as close as you get to cicadas downtown.
And then suddenly, breaking the humid silence, comes the sharp, alarming report of [...]
Album Review: Wolves in the Throne Room – Black Cascade
Pacific Northwest radical environmentalist subsistence farming. Throat-shredding, tooth-chattering black metal. To most, these might seem two irreconcilable lifestyles. No so for Olympia, Washington’s Wolves in the Throne Room. Self-describedly unifying “a Cascadian eco-spiritual awareness with the misanthropic Norwegian eruptions of the 90’s” [wittr.com], WITTR furthers its uncomprimising vision with this year’s Black Cascade.
Ostensibly named in honor of [...]
Consequences: Van Halen’s “Eruption”
You can quit rubbing those eyes. They stand corrected. CoS has another feature! In our endless quest to “school” you musically, we’ve decided to follow suit with “Consequences,” a new feature that focuses on the influence and changes, musically of course, that one song may have had on a particular style or genre of music. [...]
Dusting ‘Em Off: NEU! – NEU!
If being parodied in a Coen Brothers movie is any measure of popular success, then the West German underground scene of the 1970’s may indeed have a fighting chance at the history books. And while “Autobahn”, the fictional nihilist New Wave band depicted in The Big Lebowski (whose members include Flea of the Red Hot [...]
Album Review: Mastodon – Crack the Skye
Following up on 2006’s excellent Blood Mountain, Atlanta, Georgia’s favorite sons Mastodon stake their claim to prog-metal mastery on this year’s Crack the Skye. From its first note to its final extraneous “e”, Crack the Skye is a full-on prog assault that may even catch die-hard Mastodon fans unawares-brimming with compound-meter riffs and all manner [...]
Listen: Brighten Up
The fruit of the estimable labors of one Dan Smith and one Justin Bean, Chicago Illinois’ Brighten Up is a sonic tundra of tribal drums, prerecorded samples and washy keyboard parts distorted beyond recognition. And much like the tundra, this experimental duo’s music is an austere, inaccessible force of nature and noise–which still offers occasional glimpses of living warmth: beneath the tightly regimented electro-noise, [...]
Album Review: An Horse – Rearrange Beds
Indie Rock: it’s who you know.
Okay, maybe that’s a little much– but it might be the best way to express the bad taste left in the mouth after watching the meteoric rise to blogpop success that’s been afforded to Brisbane, Australia’s An Horse. A boy-girl duo (think a sex-changed White Stripes) hawking the latest in jangly indie pop, [...]
Album Review: The Whip – X Marks Destination
“Is this really stupid, or just ironic-stupid?”
This is one of those questions constantly knocking about in the minds of music critics. Usually, the answer is located in the subtle grey Limbo between “sucks too much to matter” (Ssion) and “too awesome to care” (Turbonegro). Apparently, that’s just a smidgen too subtle for Manchester dance-rock quartet The Whip. [...]
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I find it hilarious that this article puts Jack White in a higher position than Jay-Z. The...
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