SOUND BITES

  Over the course of their first two records, The Vaccines have built up a sizeable fan base with their energetic brand of post-punk infused indie rock. It's served them well, giving them a pair of gold records in their homeland UK, so what better way to break out on a larger scale than to pair with producer extraordinaire Dave Fridmann and make your typically pleasant songs virtually unlistenable? You may have heard lead single  Handsome , in its volume-regulated incarnation, on TV commercials. On record, Fridmann's "technique" ensures that the drums obliterate all other sounds, their incredible levels of distortion creating a vaccuum through which all other instruments are sucked. On current single  Dream Lover , the guitar fights back, mixed even louder than the obnoxious drums and coming off buzzy and piercing. It should be noted that these are both fantastic songs underneath all of that professional production. It's the equivalent of discovering a restaurant ...

If you've frequented this blog over the years, we've probably already had this talk. However, for the sake of the others, there are few groups of fans so fickle and doggedly closed minded as punk fans. A punk band that dares to stray outside their fans' comfort zone is often met with dismissal and/or disdain or far worse, and anyone who doubts that can talk to Laura Jane Grace about Against Me's early days . So, when your band draws such nuanced criticism as "kill it with fire", "puts me to sleep", "fucking sellouts", "adult contemporary hard rock" and "gay", as Ceremony did for a tune as perfectly serviceable as Adult (a single from previous album Zoo ), it's pretty safe to say you've started to expand your sound and refine your songwriting. Sorry about your feelings, YouTube commenters, but Ceremony progressed beyond your narrow scope of what music is then and continue to do so on fifth album The L-Shaped Man...

To put the anticipation for Faith No More's seventh studio album into proper perspective, consider that my seventeen year old daughter did not exist when Album of the Year was released. That record ended up being a little pedestrian, a somewhat dull and tired sounding record compared to the three that came before. It almost made sense when the group disbanded not even a year later; the members had tired of each other's company, and wanted to focus on other things (or, in the case of enigmatic frontman Mike Patton, lots of other things ). Still, it stung to see them go, even with a whimper; this was, after all, the band that pretty much singlehandedly taught me to take an open minded approach to music. In an age of expendable, cookie cutter bands, Faith No More was the cutter, the cookie and the oven. If given enough time, I can probably rattle off a hundred bands I enjoy today that I never would have given a chance to if not for the lessons I learned from Angel Dust (you c...

With Wednesday marking the last airing of The Late Show with David Letterman , there's a lot of reminiscing going on, both on the show and on the web. Far be it for me to let an opportunity to let the occasion go by without addressing it; after all, Letterman is responsible for introducing me to some of my favourite bands. Case in point: when I read an article online a handful of years ago talking about The Gaslight Anthem's performance on the show, I clicked play not because of the band themselves but rather word of Letterman's enthusiastic reaction to said performance. This is why, when Letterman hangs it up, there will be a massive void in late night TV when it comes to musical performances. Jimmy Fallon fawns over everybody, and Jimmy Kimmel doesn't seem to get more excited than necessary about anyone. Meanwhile, Dave has a genuine appreciation for the music, and heartily supports artists who give it their all. What better way to illustrate this than to appro...

Talk about slowing down. After a run of six worthy, interesting studio albums between 1995 and 2006, Incubus has taken their sweet time releasing music since; a half-decade waited was rewarded with tepid, toothless seventh record If Not Now, When? in 2011 and, nearly four more years later, the band has released twenty minutes worth of music with the promise of more to come once they finish their upcoming summer tour plans. Trust Fall (Side A) has higher stakes than perhaps any Incubus release before it; not only does it have the unenviable task of following up the most coolly received record of their career, it's also their first release for new label Island following a long tenure with Epic. It's on the band to not only move units for the label, but also to reestablish themselves with fans who may have otherwise jumped ship. Accordingly, Trust Fall (Side A) finds Incubus in mea culpa mode; from the friendly, low-risk entry fee (I paid $5 for the CD, but you might wan...

It must have been difficult for Mumford & Sons to be the flag bearers for a new generation of folk, watching a new band aping their style pop out of the woodwork for every royalty cheque they received. Whether rebelling against the over saturation of their genre, growing tired of the music themselves or a combination of these plus any amount of unseen forces, their third album finds them stubbornly abandoning pretty much everything that made them unique. Make no mistake, they don't need to explain why they came to this decision, and they're well within their rights. It's just a little baffling why a band as renowned for their aesthetic as Mumford & Sons would take a sudden about face into generic stadium rock. Banjos and acoustics are jettisoned for electric guitars and full drum kits, while the fiery and impassioned performances that served as the base for Sigh No More and Babel find themselves dulled considerably. A handful of tracks act as the exception: The W...

If you're going to make me count the most adventurous bands of the last fifteen years on one hand, the first band that's going to come to mind every time is My Morning Jacket. It's easy to underestimate just how much they've grown and how far they've pushed out their boundaries since their early days of recording reverb-soaked alt-country in empty grain silos. Starting in earnest from their 2005 breakthrough Z , they've never shied away from an impulse. Whether the reggae-meets-soft rock of Off the Record , the gonzo space funk of Highly Suspicious or the staggering big band sway of Holdin' on to Black Metal , My Morning Jacket have had a recent track record of leading with some of their most experimental material. Which is why it was a little strange that the first taste we got of The Waterfall was in the form of legitimate single material Big Decisions , with its straightforward approach and home run chorus. It put forth the possibility that, after a d...

  Many bands that have had the infamous British hype machine behind them during their formative years have gone on to defy expectations by developing into far different bands than they were originally labelled as. Just look at the discographies of Bloc Party and Arctic Monkeys for ample proof. There's a tendency there to fly in the face of these labels, to overcome the hype itself and take control of the narrative, ignorant of conventional wisdom and assumptions of character. Maybe Palma Violets will make their move someday, but their sophomore record is content to tread much of the same ground as their debut.  Danger in the Club  is a touch faster and moves a little closer to the raw power of their live show, but the recordings still lack some of that important aesthetic. The result might be just a but too loose and carefree for its own good. Many songs could have benefited from a more structured approach, and the tossed-off nature of the performances isn't as effective ...

As a slew of so called "post-grunge" albums celebrate or approach their twentieth anniversaries, it's becoming increasingly common to see a small bump in popularity for an increasingly large number of bands that saw their star fall post-Y2K, lost to time and forgotten by the majority. In terms of the drop-off, few bands experienced a more dramatic one than Everclear; after a string of dominant singles (starting with Santa Monica and ending with Wonderful ) solidified them as one of radio's favourite bands circa 1995-2000, the group seemed to fall out of fashion with alarming suddenness. By the time the second half of their Songs from an American Movie double album was released, it seemed everyone had had their fill of Everclear. The diminishing returns of the records that followed Songs from an American Movie didn't help, as the original lineup was whittled down to just frontman Art Alexakis and response to new music was lukewarm at best (their 2006 al...

  What to do when your debut album blows the blogosphere's collective mind, and you're heralded as one of the most exciting new bands to come along in recent memory? While some bands would run screaming from the pressure and/or let the attention go to their heads, Metz follows up their acclaimed 2012 debut with more of the same. Just like their debut record,  Metz II  is an crushing mix of noisy punk and menacing mid-tempo cuts. There is a little cautious advancement here, and some songs benefit from the few years' added experience; hard charging rocker  Zzyzx  wouldn't have been this tight in 2012, and their younger selves probably wouldn't have given lead single  Spit You Out  the same room to breathe that they do here. That said, you won't notice the changes unless you're looking for them; these are very subtle changes for a band whose sound is anything but. By and large, this isn't a stylistic leap you can accurately measure except in baby steps, b...

It feels improbable that, over a quarter century after starting Superchunk (and Merge Records), Non-Believers marks Mac McCaughan's first proper solo album. Maybe it's due to the six records he's released under the Portastatic moniker; he's always seemed to have an outlet outside his primary group. Regardless, this is the one that gets his given name on it and, as such, it's an intimate and personal effort. Non-Believers trades in the slacker guitar buzz of Superchunk's records for new wave synth pop, but it's not to the songs' detriment; in a way, McCaughan's songs have always skirted the edges of '80s post punk while working in some power pop aesthetic. It's not like he's U-turned on his own sound, and one listen to Our Way Free while mentally substituting the sputtering synth for stuttering guitar will make that much clear. It's tempting to write solo records like this off as vanity projects, but Non-Believers feels...