SOUND BITES

YEAR IN ROCK 2014 New format. Same great taste. COMING IN DECEMBER Since this blog's origins in 2011 (and, for longtime friends, long before), I've given an annual rundown of my favourite songs and albums at year's end, lauding the ones I enjoyed the most and crowning them with empty, meaningless awards. That hasn't changed for 2014, but the way I'm presenting it has. Rather than daily posts singling out one artist at a time starting November 1, I've decided to ditch that format and instead nominate artists and albums for specific awards. I'll be announcing nominations in December, and there are a few reasons why: a) Whereas I'd normally have a list of nominees ready to go by now, this year proves a little more difficult due to the fact that there is still a handful of very intriguing releases due to be released in November (and, in Smashing Pumpkins' case, December). How, for instance, can I possibly know what to nominate ...

In 2014, the thought of a live album is equal parts befuddling and laughable; the act of releasing a live album has become one of rock's most pointless endeavors, as it's no longer a relevant revenue generator with high quality video evidence of most shows readily available to stream online. However, there was a time when the live album was one of the music industry's drugs of choice when it came to generating Christmas shopping season revenue. Between those and greatest hits albums, the majority of November and December releases used to be comprised of these blatant cash grabs. Often redundant and/or not warranted, they rarely resulted in an end product that had any worth outside of immediate revenue for artists and labels. Occasionally, though, something special came around, something that was so much more than a simple cash grab. Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance was certainly special; straying from the obvious choices, their acoustic set was ...

In the tight-knit, narrow annals of punk, it can be a risky proposition just to evolve. The bands that last the longest are more often than not the ones who change the least; if you disagree, kindly see Exhibit A: Bad Religion. Rancid has been catching heat for the better part of their career, especially after achieving success with 1995's undisputed classic ...And Out Come the Wolves . That album's follow-up, the underrated Life Won't Wait , saw the group draw as much influence from reggae as punk, the group going so far as to record some of it in Jamaica. Going to Jamaica was a smart move, a way to use some of the financial rewards from their breakout hit for the purpose of furthering the band's sound. But much of the punk community wasn't hearing it, opting to tear them apart for paying tribute to The Clash. So, when their fifth album (their self titled release from 2000) kicked out 22 jams in under 40 minutes, it was hailed as a return to form rather than a ...

There's a telling lyrical passage that stuck out to me upon listening to Newfoundland-based indie stalwarts Hey Rosetta's third full-length LP. During the uplifting, depression-battling anthem Cathedral Bells , singer Tim Baker exclaims, "the road is lit and I'm going home". It comes near the tail end of the album's most thrilling section of songs, during which the seven-piece (plus additional hands on deck for extra orchestration) take a formidable musical journey through several genres and moods. After exploring the arena-sized farthest reaches of Coldplay, the worldly rhythms of Vampire Weekend and the zealous, choral flourishes of Arcade Fire among others, it's the comfort of home that drives the group down the album's (pun intended, I suppose) home stretch. Long before we get to that point, however, we're treated to some of the band's most interesting material to date. The album starts with current single Soft Offering (for the Oft Suff...

Bush have never really been in a position where they've been rooted for. Their first album, 1994's Sixteen Stone , was a massive hit; that was good for their pocketbooks but not so much for their reputation, as for every appreciative fan who bought the album they seemed to have two wagging tongues belittling the tunes for being derivative mainstream-minded versions of Nirvana songs. As the first new group to achieve such a massive scale of success in the wake of Kurt Cobain's death ( Sixteen Stone sales are over six million in the U.S. alone), Bush claim the (dubious?) distinction of being the first "post-grunge" band. They would go on to release three more albums of diminishing quality (plus an abysmal remix album) before temporarily disbanding in 2002. Despite best efforts, their slick Bob Rock produced 2011 comeback The Sea of Memories was a mere blip, barely cracking the top 20 and going largely ignored outside of their most fervent fans and a handful of h...

Cold War Kids find themselves entering the twilight of their first decade as a band in a state of limbo. After a debut LP that earned them boatloads of that sweet, sweet indie cred (2006's Robbers & Cowards ), a quirky but lifeless follow-up (2008's Loyalty To Loyalty ) and a bridge burning mainstream bid (2011's Mine Is Yours ), 2013's Little Miss Lonelyhearts seemed to find them stranded in a horribly uninteresting middle ground. Too cerebral to be commercially viable and too scattershot to be cohesive, it left the band in the somewhat perilous position of dying on the fence they were straddling. Perhaps sensing the gravity of the situation, fifth album Hold My Home is a more focused on tunes than their past few releases. It could be the comfort of recording at their home studio, or increased familiarity with recently added members Joe Plummer and Matthew Schwartz. Whatever the case, it's a cohesive album that sees the group making a conscious effort to cr...

As tempting as it was to review U2's thirteenth album in the hours that followed its original surprise release, I made a conscious decision to wait until it was made official by being available in record stores. Part of my reasoning was a feeling of trepidation in that it seemed like there might be more to it all; as it turns out, I was only kind of right, as the CD release tacks on a second disc of bonus tracks and alternate versions that don't actually add anything to the album proper. The main reason I abstained from an early review was that I didn't believe I could give the album a fair shake without separating myself from the hoopla that surrounded its release or the reactions to it, positive and negative. There didn't seem to be any gray area, only two sides; those who hated the implications of the free release (and the fact that it bullied its way onto half a billion iTunes accounts without asking anyone first), and those who swore U2 their unconditional love....

To say Slipknot has had a tumultuous career is a bit of an understatement; chided for the nu-metal leanings of their first two albums by some and bemoaned for the evolving songcraft on the two that followed by others (not to mention internal tensions that resulted in multiple hiatuses along the way), this band was in for a tough go of it coming into their fifth album (and first in six years) as it was. Throw in the tragic death of bassist Paul Gray in 2010 and the departure of former drummer Joey Jordison and it's a minor miracle that a fifth Slipknot album exists at all. And, in the face of such catastrophe and calamity, the immediate question going into .5: The Gray Chapter for many will be "should it exist?" It is worth noting up front that, upon a cursory listen to the album, both Gray's and Jordison's losses are deeply felt. The replacement players know what they're doing, but couldn't possibly stand a chance of playing the same spiritual roles as ...

There's something to be said for a band as creatively restless as the Melvins; they've forged a career that just recently passed the thirty year mark while never losing their quest for new sounds. And yet, for as many directions their muse has pulled them over the decades, they've somehow managed to also develop their own unique sonic signature. It's the sludgy, metallic riffage that opens the album on Bride of Crankenstein , a hazy stomper that leaves no doubt as to who's providing the soundtrack. However, there are a couple of new players here; this incarnation of the Melvins (there have been plenty) features Paul Leary and Jeff Pinkus of Butthole Surfers joining pre-existing Melvins King Buzzo and Dale Crover. What they bring, as if this band needed it, was extra weirdness; it courses throughout the album, in stabs of synth, odd production shifts and other assorted experiments. Leary also gets full credit on three songs, which certainly stand out from the other...

This one might be a tough sell. Whether or not you see the debut album from Korn as a pioneering release for hard music or the harbinger of hard music's ruination depends largely on your opinion of what came after. If you subscribe to the latter group, you likely lament that Korn begat Limp Bizkit begat Staind begat Puddle of Mudd, so on, so forth. Of course, it's a little silly to blame Korn for Puddle of Mudd, but they've made themselves easy targets with a string of albums over the past fifteen years or so that hover somewhere between "diminishing returns" and "gaudy embarrassments". But let's forget everything that came after for just a moment, and remember that there was a time twenty years ago when nothing like Korn existed. Their unique blend of bowel shaking tones, hip hop rhythms and explicit anguish officially ushered in the genre later labeled as "nu metal", for better or worse. Korn doesn't speak ...

If you've been following Danish art punkers Iceage from their inception, chances are your first listen to third album Plowing Into The Field Of Love will prompt some level of confusion. After all, this a band that built a reputation for their furious, hardcore influenced two minute slabs of noise that opts to open their new album with a five minute long ragged waltz, complete with piano. Plowing Into The Fields Of Love isn't shy about blowing up the band's sound; this was clear from the time shuffling single The Lord's Favorite dropped, and Iceage spend the full 48 minutes of the album fearlessly (gleefully, even) plucking influences and trying to fit them into their aesthetic. It's like they're roaming the produce section at the grocery store taking bites out of whatever's within reach. There's the drunken new wave clutter of How Many , the explosive nervous energy that runs through Glassy Eyed, Dormant And Veiled , and the countrified post punk of...

Longtime lovers of rock and alternative music in Canada have to be feeling a little weird these days. More and more major Canadian alt bands from the '90s that went gently into the night have resurfaced in recent years (see: Headstones, Big Wreck, the Grapes of Wrath, etc.), armed not just with reunion tours but also with new material. So when Moist announced their return amid The Tea Party's unveiling of their first new music in a decade, there simply wasn't enough thunder to go around, and I sadly approached Moist's fourth album with a little less excitement than I normally would have. One of the first things you'll notice about Glory Under Dangerous Skies is the abundance of guitars. This is surely at least partially due to production duties being handled by lead guitarist Mark Makoway; far be it for me to complain about guitars being present on a rock album, but they're a lot more prevalent here than on Moist's original trinity of albums. Indeed, the ...

Weezer's ninth album really wants to be the grand return to form it's being marketed as. It goes so far as to explicitly state its intentions as such in lead single Back To The Shack (which, if you want to take solace in something, is by far the worst song on the record), wherein primary songwriter Rivers Cuomo professes a desire to be "rockin' out like it's '94". Of course, there's an inherent natural problem with the approach; expressly attempting to recapture a decades-old feeling and chemistry can't help but come off as disingenuous regardless of how well it's executed. Everything Will Be Alright In The End does everything it can to get the goodwill of critics and fans back. Producer Ric Ocasek is back in the fold to help the band rekindle some of the rock fire that they burned with during their iconic first two albums and sporadically since. The band themselves still remember most of their old tricks, and use these callback triggers wi...