SOUND BITES

When I named Manchester Orchestra's second record my Album of the Year in 2009 I praised its gut-punching, emotive nature, and its sense of bombast; Mean Everything To Nothing remains one of my favourite albums of the last decade. Balancing nervous energy and cathartic aggression, it's a phenomenally executed rock album. When they upped the ante by bringing in actual orchestration on 2011's Simple Math , it was effective but only to a certain degree. Like kids with a new toy, strings and electronic flourishes were thrown at everything, sometimes to the song's detriment. Listening to Cope , it's immediately clear that this is going to be something different; Top Notch , like the bulk of the album, it's thoroughly dominated by guitars. On Top Notch they growl, screech and slash, something like what I imagine as the sound of a forest fire on the verge of escaping containment. As the album plays, the guitars stay front and center, standing guard against any woul...

"Certain songs, they get scratched into our souls", Craig Finn sang on his band's debut album just over a decade ago. In the time that's passed, they've slowly transformed from scrappy bar rock bards to earnest arena rock storytellers. Nowhere was this more clear than on The Hold Steady's previous album, 2010's Heaven Is Whenever ; packed with ballads and light on the energy that flowed through their first trio of records, that album put the focus squarely on the craft. With Teeth Dreams , The Hold Steady attempt to get back to the rollicking party rock that enamored so many to them in the first place. New guitarist Steve Selvidge is all over the record, layering on thick licks and hard riffs depending on what the situation calls for. They've also turned to acclaimed rock producer Nick Raskulinecz, whose previous work includes Deftones, Alice in Chains and Foo Fighters. To be sure, then, this is a rock record. The thing is, it's a heavily produ...

Andrew Stockdale is no stranger to surprising people; about a year ago, a rough version of his debut solo record Keep Moving was posted to Soundcloud without warning (under the Wolfmother name, although he would announce its release as a solo album about two weeks later). So another Wolfmother album appearing suddenly isn't altogether shocking. Nevertheless, here we have it; New Crown , with a cover that seems to confirm it as the third proper Wolfmother album we almost got in 2013, streaming in all its ragged glory at the group's Bandcamp site . Listening through the first time, there's an overwhelming sense of rawness; most of these songs sound like demos, which leads me to believe that there's a more polished version of this record in the making. That said, album opener (and probable first single) How Many Times is the most finished sounding song here; it has the crispest mix of the ten tracks, and is the only one that hearkens back to previous Wolfmother suc...

This article may require just a bit of imagination if you're of a certain age, as it calls back to a time when the musical climate for Canadian musicians was in a much different state than it is today. Of course, thanks to the Arcade Fire-led charge, Montreal is seen as a spawning pool for globally adored indie rock; combined with the worldwide success of non-rock acts like Drake and Justin Bieber, no one bats an eye anymore when a Canadian musician conquers territory outside their homeland. Regardless, imagine a time when unless your band was really lucky, chances were you'd only ever find success as a Canadian in Canada. Sure, there were a few artists flirting with American audiences by 1994; Crash Test Dummies had actually scored a couple of pretty substantial hits stateside, and a couple other bands had the good fortune of having one of their albums released in the U.S. only to never get another crack at it when sales didn't rival the success of their American peer...

Sometime just before my high school graduation in June of 1994, I scared the shit of my mom. A friend of mine had just picked up the new Pantera album and given me a dubbed cassette copy of it to tide me over until I got my own (I don't know how many times I can say it in these write-ups, but no internet access in '94). Without a lyric sheet, however, I didn't get as much out of what Philip Anselmo was trying to convey. So, I got out my typewriter (again, 1994) and got the words down on paper. Which brings us to my mom, who in the process of putting some laundry away found the lyrics to Strength Beyond Strength . I was taken to task over such mom-friendly lines as "fuck you and your college dream" and "no family life to open my arms to". "Is this how you feel about life?" I was asked. As the follow-up to the surprisingly well-received Vulgar Display of Power, Far Beyond Driven was bound to be heavily criticized and hotly anticipated; it...

There's nothing wrong with having a good time. Sure, from an artistic standpoint, the best records conjure memories and emotions, or inspire reflection or contemplation. However, sometimes it's best to just turn off your brain, crank it up and just let the music do all the heavy lifting. Going To Hell is undoubtedly an album better suited to the latter category, and that's okay. Their first full-length in four years comes after nearly a solid year of promotion, and is definitely worth the wait as long as you weren't expecting any grand, transcendent statements. The problem is, it seems to aspire to be more than it is. Religious themes abound in the music and imagery, seemingly pointing toward a theme that Going To Hell simply doesn't have. Aside from that cover and a few half-baked lyrical references, nothing sets this album apart from any other that vaguely mentions the existential. The lingering feeling I have after the 46 minutes are up is that The Pretty R...

If there's one thing you can take away from Liars no matter your level of adoration for them, it's that they don't like to stay in one place for too long. Over the course of their six previous albums, they've explored off-kilter angular dance rock, experimental haunted ambience, psychedelic noise rock and paranoid electronic detours. Which is why, at first blush, it's a little disappointing to hear that their seventh album continues to explore the electronics they gave the reins to on 2012's WIXIW . However, after a spin of Mess , it seems like a necessary extension of those WIXIW experiments, like the previous album was a dark closet Liars looked into but didn't bother trying on too many of the outfits within. Mess gleefully mashes instruments and effects together under meaty beats; organs, guitars and strings all get their due, though this is primarily an electronic album. The most exciting thing about Mess is its playfulness; whereas WIXIW seemed co...

Sometimes, an album floods me with feelings and inspires poetic passages to describe the way in which the band awakens feelings, urges, and desires in listeners like me. Other times, they just pummel my poor ears and brain until I submit. Crystalline is one of the latter. I could think of all kinds of fancy words and clever analogies to describe the kind of trip this album takes me on, especially considering all the sounds it reminds of. The harmonious shout vocals of mid-period Mastodon, the groove-heavy riffing of Clutch, the atmospheric crunch of Baroness, the mood setting dark detours of Tool; all are present and accounted for during the album's first three tracks. Familiarity alone, however, doesn't make an awesome record. Some bands practice a near plagiarist form of flattery, which usually only serves to remind the listener how much better the bands they ape are. But HARK pays service to the aforementioned groups while letting their own identity shine through. T...

Maybe I can't be fully trusted to do a Taking Back Sunday review. After all, I haven't exactly been hanging on their every word in the fifteen years or so since their inception; truth be told, I've never even counted myself among their fans. My knowledge of the band is somewhat stunted, but I do know without a Wikipedia session that they're one of the bands considered heavily influential when it came to the emo scene that made a sizable dent in rock's consciousness around the mid '00s. Which makes it a little tougher for me to establish proper context as a guy in his late thirties who never enamored himself too much with what was coming out of those dark corners; sure, I was aware of singles and had a passing familiarity, but Taking Back Sunday couldn't capture my interest all the way to the point that I bought an album. Then again, maybe this non-partisan view makes me the perfect candidate to review Happiness Is , the band's sixth album (and first o...

The Seattle explosion of 1991/92 had a measure of damning effect on major label rock; bands with little to no talent were signed en masse, given blank cheques and reaped the benefits of their owners' marketing machines' full power. With so many bands suddenly bathed in the spotlight, it got a lot more difficult to determine who was worthy of the attention and who was only getting it because some geriatric rich white dudes were using them as pawns in a dick-measuring contest. Though there were some real gems to be unearthed this way, there seemed to be a Candlebox or Sponge for every Primus or Stone Temple Pilots. However, it also meant greater exposure for the already existing Seattle bands. Alice In Chains hit their stride just as people went looking for more of that Seattle sound; and Soundgarden, who had already been around for about seven years (and signed to A&M for three) by the time Nirvana released Nevermind , had unleashed their gloriously heavy third album Ba...

Remembered by some as "the one with Closer on it", Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral is blatantly, shockingly more than its crass and silly hit single. Anyone with a passing familiarity with the album has a sense of its scope, but even some fans have yet to discover all it has to offer. Probably one of the most masterfully layered recordings ever created, The Downward Spiral is an experimental audio surgery performed with equal parts expert precision and brute force. It's so sonically dense, I was able to hear things on the hundredth spin I hadn't noticed on the first 99. And the production is near perfection. I've gone on record ( here , if you care to read it) as saying that this album is "the pinnacle of digital recording", and I stick by it. Loud without going to the Loudness Wars, reflective and full of dynamic range when it needs to breathe, The Downward Spiral is (in my opinion) the most rewarding sonic experience the compact disc f...