Tags archives: album review
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8 years ago
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Brooklyn's Slothrust will be releasing their second full length album later this week (October 28th) on Dangerbird Records, and if you're unfamiliar with this trio, it's time to give them a listen. The new album titled, Everyone Else grabs you immediately with a surf rock instrumental track that makes you wonder what's coming next, and then you hear the melancholy vocal intro of track two- "Like a Child Behind a Tombstone." It's a slow build up into a guitar driven rocker with metaphors abound, and now you're hooked on lines like, "I think my face looks like glass, but my body feels plastic" and "I feel like a child hiding behind your tombstone."
As impressed as I am with Wellbaum's eloquent lyrics, musically the band has great range. From the punk-esque, Violent Femme's like, edgey cut, "Trial and Error" to the bluesy "Horseshoe Crab" and the jazz influenced "The Last Time I saw My Horse," they achieve a range of music that isn't often heard from today's one trick pony, cookie-cutter bands. And if you're into the more classic rock sound, "Mud" takes you on quite a journey with a blues inspired intro, to a classic guitar driven, drum heavy rocker. Dare I reference the greatest of the greats Led Zeppelin?
This is an album for music lovers who can appreciate the achievements of a band that's hitting it's stride and has the ability to capture the best of rock, jazz and blues on one album.
--Frank Jackson
You can see them live at Irving Plaza on Saturday, Oct[...]
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What year is it? Everyone is playing Pokemon and blink-182 is back. We discussed the latter in the last installment of AFP Music. Going off the first half of the band’s comeback album California, blink may be back, but they’re not the same. Although despite a slow start to a lengthy record, all hope isn’t lost. The last half a dozen or so songs prove that the band is still as good as you remember.
The first bonafide slow song on the record, "Home Is Such a Lonely Place" finds the band exploring newer territory. It has a little bit more of an electronic element compared to what blink usually puts out, but not so much as to earn a comparison to DeLonge's other band Angels and Airwaves. Another notable characteristic of the song is it's pace. Despite having written close to a dozen records over the course of their career, blink has rarely included a slower, acoustic song. Most bands have at least one per an album. This is the closest blink has come, the only comparisons being either “All of This” or “I’m Lost Without You” or “Miss You” all off of the blink-182. Despite this being their first stab at writing something so stripped back, the song is a success. It isn’t staggeringly special, but it’s touching and Hoppus sound great behind the mic. However, when Skiba takes his turn at vocals, it’s hard to not hear DeLonge in his repeated "without yew"s. The band knew DeLonge's departure would be felt on the record and they replaced him with someone who can sing their old songs,[...]
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Yesterday, blink-182 released their new album California. A much anticipated record, it’s their first since ousting founding guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge. Early last year, the group announced the lineup change and welcomed Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio as a third member. At a Blink show shortly thereafter, bassist Mark Hoppus introduced Skiba, then filling in on guitar, as our “new step dad that is going to be living with us from now on”. After years of ill-will amongst the band, it seemed the Hoppus-DeLonge divorce had finally gone through. Since joining, Skiba has racked up a good amount of performance time with the band and earned himself something of a warm welcome from the fanbase. He proved he could sing all the old songs and sound enough like DeLonge to keep with the sound, but add just enough of his own personality as to not come across as a carbon copy. The real test would be their record. It would definitively answer the question blink-182 fans had been posing since DeLonge left, “Who the fuck is Matt Skiba?”
The album opens with "Cynical". In the anxiety-ridden open verse, Hoppus introspectively sings over clean guitar. Before listeners have time to wonder whether this slower pace is the new Blink, Skiba and drummer Travis Barker breakthrough. What comes next sound definitely like the band. There are all the elements you’d expect from Barker’s fills to the back-and-forth of Hoppus and Skiba trading off vocalist duties. What started as a questionable way to [...]
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9 years ago
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New Jersey's pop punkers Man Overboard released their newest album Heavy Love today. The record is the follow-up to their 2013 release Heart Attack. The band has been steadily putting out music since their founding in 2008, beginning with the self-released Hung Up on Nothing. Not long after their EP came out, the band signed to Run for Cover Records and released another EP Dahlia. The following year, the band released Real Talk and signed to Rise Records. While the group has cycled through a few drummers and shifted its formation to some extent during this process, they’ve also largely stayed the same. Band members and childhood friends Nik Bruzzese (vocals, bass) and Wayne Wildrick (guitar) formed the group, recruiting Zac Eisenstein (guitar, vocals, piano) and then-drummer Justin Mondschein to join soon after. There was some reshuffling of the line-up in those early years and a period where Wildrik briefly left Man Overboard, but band’s current iteration seems to be sticking. The newer members guitarist Justin Collier and drummer Joe Talarico fit seamlessly into the band's sound, creating no disruption for this new record, which in it's nature is full-blown pop punk.
You can hear the famed inflection in Heavy Love’s opening track “Now That You’re Home”. Bruzzese nails that almost nasal-y tone without sounding whiny and lets listeners know within the first three minutes of the record that Man Overboard is committed to the genre. As if naming their group after a Blink-182 [...]
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10 years ago
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Singer-songwriter Nick Santino has blossomed into quite the solo artist since leaving A Rocket to the Moon in 2013. Where his former band had only hints of the midwest and barely a twinge of country to it, his newest EP is decidedly country. It bears more resemblance to Santino’s short lived sort-of-solo act Nick Santino & The Northern Wind. Under that moniker, Santino released Going Home EP and The Ones You Meet Along the Way: A Collection of Stories from the Road EP in 2013. The records are more electric than his newest EP, but they provide a good transition between his career as a frontman to his career as a solo musician.
Compared to his past alt rock efforts, Savannah is completely stripped back, populated by little more than Santino’s slow strum. The EP is built almost entirely by acoustic guitar and gentle piano, a backdrop which fits Santino’s voice perfectly. Savannah sounds like Santino has cemented himself in whatever sub-genre of country he’s cornering. It isn’t anything like what Brad Paisley or Luke Bryan play, but rather something resembling an acoustic session. The slide guitar and various other instruments of Santino’s 2014 release Big Skies are nowhere to be found. Instead these six quick tracks, which follow up Live in Sao Paulo, a split EP he recorded with The Maine, make a science out simplicity.
The opening track “Rio” is a bright point. The storyline is sweet. Santino paints a picture of eating breakfast in bed and running away to Mexico t[...]
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10 years ago
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Like most Walk The Moon releases, the band’s newest album Talking Is Hard is easy to dance to. The band has continued with their goofy brand of synth-heavy pop songs, but for this their second full-length they have added a guitar-driven older edge. At times the record seems fit for a ‘70 discotheque or ‘80 dancehall; the band channels an older era (paired with what leadman Nicholas Petricca calls “cheese factor”) for songs like “We Are The Kids.”
“We Are The Kids” is like the synth-centered pop rock answer to Taylor Swift’s “22.” It has that same we-are-young-and-reckless vibe. However, instead of taking TSwift's route of making fun of exes and dressing up like hipsters, the men of Walk the Moon shout at cops, howl at the moon, rip holes in their shirts and get mud on their sneakers in this slower jam. The glittery guitar and overall underdog attitude make this one of the strongest tracks on the record. The album’s lead single “Shut Up and Dance” is equally as fun and bright. It’s also absolutely infectious. It indeed makes you want to shut up and dance. The boy-meets-girl storyline bares resemblance to “Anna Sun” off the band’s debut record Walk The Moon and proves that lyrically Walk the Moon can still be terribly sweet and charming. Musically, Kevin Ray, the band’s bassist, wrote a wonderfully potent part for “Shut Up and Dance” and the synth gets a great solo halfway through. The song has a great energy that makes you want to jam along, no matter how emba[...]
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10 years ago
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The first two albums from piano pop band Jukebox the Ghost have a distinctive spring to them that for a time defined the band’s sound. Let Live and Let Ghosts (2008) and Everything Under the Sun (2010) are both upbeat and lighthearted when compared to the more somber Safe Travels (2012). For this their third album, the dark humor like “Schizophrenia” and the cheekiness of tracks like “Hold It In” gave way to songs like the more serious “Don’t Let Me Fall Behind” and the more introspective “Dead.” Safe Travels marked a sonic as well as a thematic shift for the band. They still wrote humorous piano-driven pop songs, evident by tracks like “Oh, Emily,” but the album also showed that the band was learning to slow down and refine their sound. The track “Everybody Knows” perhaps best represents this new sound, this new trajectory that the band continued on for their newest release Jukebox the Ghost.
Their self-titled, which came out on the 21st, sounds like a continuation of Safe Travel. It returns to some of the same themes lyrically and sonically walks a similar line. That same slow building, anthem-esque beat of “Everybody Knows” can be found in the album’s lead single “The Great Unknown.” The song opens with pianist/vocalist Ben Thornewill singing alone to his piano; this is built masterfully into a crescendo of layered vocals and snare drum. This sound, along with the song's lyrics, characterizes Jukebox the Ghost. The lyrics are autobiographical, but still relatable an[...]
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