Tag: Headlines (Page 62 of 76)

Buzzcocks: Love Bites (Reissue)

February 9, 2010 /


RIYL: Stiff Little Fingers, Sex Pistols, The Clash

https://www.esdmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/buzzcocks-love.jpg Love Bites is the Buzzcocks’ second album. When it first came out in 1978, it was probably the closest punk rock came to a concept album at the time, the concept being just how much love can bite. Almost every single song on Love Bites is a blistering pop-punk piece of bitterness about the darker side of love and lust. Screw Morrissey and the Cure – no one has ever laid pop misery down like Pete Shelley and crew do here. If songs like “Just Love,” “Real World” and the immortal masterpiece “Ever Fallen in Love” don’t move you on some level emotionally, then you have either never faced the pain of a broken relationship or you are dead inside. Love Bites is a brutal trip to the dark side of love, but it’s one that sounds so damn good that it’s impossible not to revisit it again and again. Being miserable never sounded this good before or since.

And as if you needed another reason to own this classic of pop-punk, Mute’s new re-issue adds a whopping 30 bonus tracks, including several Peels Sessions, over a dozen demos and a live concert from 1978. Shockingly, none of these add-ons sound like filler, even though you’re getting some songs two or even three times. The Peel Session function as great mini-concerts, the demos (which sound amazing) work both as quality performances and as a study in how songs can change from conception to final recording, and the concert is a high-energy set that includes non-Love Bites classics like “What Do I Get” and “Autonomy.” If you like punk rock and you don’t own Love Bites already, you’re doing it wrong and you have even less of an excuse not to own it now. If you’ve already bought Love Bites you can re-purchase it feeling confident that you aren’t being bilked out of your cash for a cheap double-dip. This is the real-deal, a must-own no matter what. (Mute 2010)

Buzzcocks’ MySpace Page

Artists, CD Reviews, Punk, Rock

Spoon: Transference

February 5, 2010 /

3 1/2 stars
RIYL: Modest Mouse, Pixies

With an album name like Transference, generally meaning misdirected emotions or a kind of displacement, it should come as no surprise that Spoon side-step their usual M.O for their seventh studio album. For those who grew accustomed to the band’s neatness on albums like Gimme Fictionand Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Transference will feel unkempt, while early adopters of the band might appreciate the album’s raw qualities.

With the standard two to three years Spoon takes between records, it’s clear that a lot of planning goes into each album – but with Transference, that implication is a bit sad, because the album projects a one-off kind of attitude. Apparently the band had to work hard even to make it sound like they didn’t. The songs are rife with actions that make the writing feel half thought out – from pauses in the middle of words and sentences, to uncharacteristically long and directionless instrumentals. It would be something if this resulted in some new experimental form or sound, but it’s not wildly different – just slightly off-kilter. So mostly it reads like Spoon got into the studio with material that hadn’t quite fermented.

With its ambling feel, the tracks that bend the ear are the poppier ones, or the serious deviations in style. On “Written in Reverse,” Britt Daniel is literally screaming for your attention – and get it he does. “Who Makes Your Money,” on the other hand, stands out for its echoey, distant subtlety, and “Goodnight Laura” for its unusual display of sentiment, “When you think your thoughts be sure that they are sweet ones.”

Transference is a classic grower, an album that will reward those with the patience -which will most likely be Spoon’s most established fans. Unfortunately for others, what lingers most may not be the songs, but questions of what might have happened if the band sat on these songs awhile longer, or what might have happened if the band actually went wild instead of just trying to sound like they did. Merge 2010

Spoon MySpace Page

Alternative, CD Reviews, Rock

Gobotron: On Your Mark, Get Set…

February 4, 2010 /


RIYL: The Lemonheads, Pavement, Ben Kweller

On Your Mark, Get Set… receives bonus points off the bat for the band title, which riffs on our favorite video game of all time. It also receives a couple ‘Who’d a thunk it’ points because the album is the work of Manchester Orchestra guitarist Robert McDowell, a band who had us running for the hills two minutes into their performance at last year’s Lollapalooza. But still waters apparently run deep, as McDowell’s solo venture, which he performed and recorded by himself one summer and mixed the following summer, bears no resemblance to his day job, forsaking shrieking melodrama for yesteryear-flavored indie pop. “Nice Things” could pass for a lo-fi Sloan, and “Never Turn Around,” with its classic give-and-take vocals, is as perfect a power pop song as you’re likely to hear in this year or the next. Which means, of course, that there is no chance of these elements being incorporated into Manchester Orchestra’s sound, a decision that is as understandable (five words: girls don’t like power pop) as it is unfortunate. With any luck, thought, the Audities listees will buy enough copies of On Your Mark, Get Set… to encourage McDowell to give it another go. (Favorite Gentlemen 2010)

Gobotron MySpace page

Alternative, Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Pop, Power Pop, Rock

MOTOR: Hyper Machine

February 4, 2010 /


RIYL: Human Resource, 808 State, Boys Noize

MOTOR is hardcore (too hardcore for lowercase letters, apparently), and they want you to know it. With song titles like “Bite the Bullet,” “Death Rave,” “Le Bitch,” and “Jacked Up” they’re advertising their abrasive acid house before you even listen to them. With house going the way of electro and disco thanks to artists like Justice and Daft Punk, it’s nice to see someone take it back to the acid house roots of the late ’80s/early ’90s while adding their own spin to it. In the case of MOTOR, that spin is a dark and menacing vibe that is usually reserved for darkcore drum and bass and hardstyle. Acid house was already jarring and abrasive enough, so when you add the dark and evil vibe that MOTOR is going for, you get nonstop jarring, pounding rhythms, vicious synth riffs, countless hoovers and screeching sirens custom designed to raise the roof at a midnight rave. There’s no other way to put it – this shit is intense.

Maybe too intense. Hyper Machine sure as hell lives up to its name. It never lets up, the beats are nonstop, the sirens get louder and louder and save for a few quick samples, there are no vocals to speak of. So it can wear on you after a while, especially since later tracks like “Le Bitch” and “Thwack” just aren’t as interesting as the high-energy title track or “Death Rave,” a track so in your face that it’s just one step away from punching you in the face. Perhaps it’s best in small doses or at an actual rave But those looking for a throwback to classic hard house should really dig this. (Dim Mak 2010)

MOTOR MySpace Page

CD Reviews, Dance, Electronica

Various Artists: Crazy Heart: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

January 29, 2010 /


RIYL: Stephen Bruton, Ryan Bingham, T Bone Burnett

At the turn of the century – just about the time the record industry was experiencing its Wile E. Coyote moment before plunging into its recent sales abyss – Jeff Bridges decided to start a label, Ramp Records, and release a Michael McDonald album alongside Bridges’ own solo debut, Be Here Now. Neither release received much attention at the time, but as vanity-plate recording projects from actors tend to go, Bridges’ wasn’t bad; he had a rumpled, Dude-like charm as a vocalist, and although his songwriting tended toward the ponderous (“Buddha & Christ at Large,” anyone?), the songs communicated the same calculatedly offhand attention to craft as his acting. Point is, Bridges’ critically acclaimed turn as the booze-soaked songwriter at the center of “Crazy Heart” isn’t wholly revelatory – and Be Here Now might have stood a better chance at being a hit if he’d surrounded his songs with stellar, downbeat performances from artists like Buck Owens, Sam Phillips, and the Louvett Brothers.

And okay, so Bridges didn’t have much of a hand in writing “Crazy Heart’s” original songs, but he does steal the spotlight on the soundtrack – no mean feat when you’re sharing the stage with the aforementioned artists, as well as young Americana lion Ryan Bingham, who’s already won a Golden Globe for one of his contributions, “The Weary Kind.” There really aren’t any bad songs here, but it’s Bridges’ performances that’ll draw you in the most – when he sings “funny how fallin’ feels like flyin’ for a little while,” sounding for all the world like a more tuneful John Hiatt, you’ll flash back to every heartbreak you’ve ever suffered and every shitty bar you’ve ever been sorry you sat down in. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll want to own this, without question – but even if you haven’t, it’s the best cross-industry soundtrack we’ve seen since John Mellencamp starred in Falling from Grace in 1992. Pour yourself a strong one, sprinkle some sawdust on the floor, and get carried away. (New West 2010)

Crazy Heart MySpace page

Americana, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Country

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