SOUND BITES

I've done variations on this theme several times in the past, usually after a long period of time during which I abandon my responsibilities around here and allow unreviewed releases to pile up high. Now that my "reviews" are shorter and without much deep thought involved, I kind of figured we wouldn't get to this point again so soon; and yet, here we are. Anyway, here are some albums I've checked out over the summer but not yet shared my opinions on; I could have done haiku just as easily as dropping one or two sentences as I have below, but it turns out I'm too lazy to even arrange this shit into the proper lines and syllables. Shrug. MONDO COZMO New Medicine June 12, 2020 • Last Gang Highlights Black Cadillac • Upside Down • Come On For his second album as Mondo Cozmo, Josh Ostrander got help from some heavy hitters; Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's Peter Hayes features heavily, both as a guest guitarist and co-producer, and previous single Come On was co...

  When you think about Marilyn Manson albums, "grower" may actually be the last thing you think about, especially if your interest waned around the turn of the century like it did for so many; if you haven't paid attention, your lasting impression of Marilyn Manson is likely of a band intent on shock and disruption, incessantly seeking controversy and attention no matter the offence or the cost to their fan base. Indeed, as their career stretched further and further away from their commercial peak (1996's incendiary breakthrough Antichrist Superstar ), there were less and less reasons to care about the increasingly forced attempts to provoke. Combine a more indifferent audience with a less engaged artist and you've got the recipe for rock bottom, which one could argue found Marilyn Manson around a decade ago. Faced with the impending closing of the curtains, the decision was made to steer into more mature and musically diverse waters, and 2015's The Pale Emper...

  When The Killers burst onto the scene a little over fifteen years ago, peddling their synth-heavy '80s rock revival by way of multi-platinum smash Hot Fuss , a lot of folks figured the success the result of a fad. When their follow-up ( Sam's Town , which I personally enjoyed more) sold half, those folks seemed like they were onto something. When sales of 2008's Day & Age were half of that again, a lot of folks assumed The Killers were pretty much finished. To their credit, they soldiered on with a fourth record ( Battle Born , which sold half yet again) four years later, and then a fifth five years after that (2017's Wonderful, Wonderful ), which... you guessed it, sold half again. Still, a big hit in the age of the internet goes a long way. That triple platinum debut album spawned Mr. Brightside , not just the band's most enduring hit but in fact one of the most enduring hits by anyone ever; sixteen years after its release, it's still universally loved,...

  Absolutely massive in Europe and criminally underrated in North America. Such is the continuing narrative for Scottish genre-hopping stadium rockers Biffy Clyro, and their eighth official album (ninth if you count last year's scattershot soundtrack Balance, Not Symmetry , which most outlets are wont to do despite A Celebration of Endings being given the working title Opus 8 during production) isn't likely to change that momentum on either side of the Atlantic. If anything, the more accessible and pop-leaning tendencies that started coming more to the forefront over the past few albums have been clawed back with only a couple of exceptions. Instead, Biffy Clyro seem to have recaptured some of the adventurous, unpredictable spirit that set them apart from the legions of post-grunge/indie also-rans during their slow and steady rise. Sure, there are reminders that they've developed a knack for big hooks, most notably on lead single/red herring Instant History and current s...

You can tell a lot about a band from the quality of the music that they release, obviously; it's another thing entirely, though, to take into consideration the quality of the music that they don't. In my mind, some bands separate themselves from the herd based on B-sides and outtakes that match and even sometimes surpass the material on their studio albums.  The case of My Morning Jacket sort of fits the narrative, but not really; they don't have a ton of unreleased content (at least, not that I'm aware of) but the sessions for their 2015 album The Waterfall were fruitful enough to leave them with a fair amount of unused songs. That's the setup for The Waterfall II , not a sequel but an addendum, an album-length experience pieced together from that unused music, released five years after the original's release. These songs don't always rival the ones that made the first album's release, but there is a lot of charm and chill contained here, and also a ha...

Throughout the '90s, as a class of exciting young rock bands wrestled power away from the excess and gloss of '80s hair metal under the umbrella of what lazy journalists coined "grunge", rock music experienced perhaps its greatest ever surge in popularity outside the days of The Beatles. I assign some of the credit for this to the cross-pollination of influences and styles that permeated major labels and, in turn, charts during the decade. If you think about it, there hasn't been a decade (before or since) home to as many niche genre breakouts and such a wide berth of disparate talents succeeding as the '90s. To put it into a bit clearer perspective, consider this: any current indie band that gets even a little bit of traction on streaming and/or social media these days would have found themselves a major label deal with relative ease in the '90s. For example, off the top of my head, take a band like Black Midi; indie darlings enjoying great critical accla...

After releasing a plethora of singles and EPs over the course of their first few years, Deep Down Happy marks the official debut LP from UK upstarts Sports Team; that said, that early material helped them develop a small but rabid fan base in their home country, so it feels just a bit unfair to label them as upstarts.  Whatever their status may be, their first full-length has finally arrived; the run-up has been long, with one of the album's re-recorded tracks first released in 2017, so suffice to say anyone turned onto the band early has been waiting a long time for this. After one listen to Deep Down Happy , I can tell how Sports Team has amassed such a loyal following. Occupying a sonic space somewhere in the neighbourhood of Parquet Courts and Courtney Barnett (hey, this record just happens to be helmed by Burke Reid, who co-produced both of Barnett's LPs!), Sports Team's sound is rough around the edges and fun.  When a band's debut record reminds me of my Album of...