Boris – New Album - February 2012 February 12th, 2012

The usually punishing Japanese experimental doom metal trio’s New Album is an unexpected set of sugary melodic dream pop, wrapped in Athena faerie artwork you might see on a twelve year old girl’s pencil case. Party Boy’s electronic beats and listless female vocal approach dance floor anthem territory; Luna plunges 1990s Thames Valley shoe-gazing guitars…

Rich Hopkins & Luminarios – Buried Treasures - February 2012 February 2nd, 2012

If Neil Young released Buried Treasures, it would be hailed as a return to form. And when Drive-By Truckers evidence similarly unselfconscious immediacy, we praise their ability to inhabit characters. But Rich Hopkins is for real, a regular guitar-toting guy who grew a conscience in the Peace Corps, cowriting his best songs to date with…

Matthew Bourne – Montauk Variations - February 2012 February 1st, 2012

Matthew Bourne is found in typically excitable mode on the newly released Everybody Else But Me, alongside the saxophonist Tony Bevan. But, with Bourne alone at the piano, Montauk Variations’ meditative improvisations instead use cautiously melodic figures to trace penumbral shadows of memory and regret. Bourne’s obstreperous other self surfaces on Within and Abrade, stroking…

The Woodbine & Ivy Band – The Woodbine & Ivy Band - February 2012 February 1st, 2012

Peter Philipson, guitarist of the missed Starless And Bible Black, leads a Manchester collective through a superb set of traditional British songs, played in a pedal steel laden early Seventies West Coast style, with guest vocalists from folk’s fringes. Jenny McCormick walks the primrose path of The Wicker Man’s satanically seductive Gently Johnny; Elle Osborne’s…

The Azusa Plane – Where The Sands Turn To Gold - February 2012 February 1st, 2012

Jason DiEmilio committed suicide in 2006, his death hastened by tinnitus and painful sensitivity to sound. It’s assumed his conditions resulted from the atonal, high volume, feedback drones he wrenched from his guitar as The Azusa Plane, but DiEmilio’s music always sounded like someone trying to block something out with clouds of vibrating bliss. Here’s…

Darren Hayman – January Songs - January 2012 January 29th, 2012

Darren Hayman, a former John Peel favorite adept at addictive indie-jangles and precise writerly nuggets, has released thirty-one tracks, written and recorded at the rate of one a day throughout last January. The double CD is stripped of the tang of arrogance by Hayman’s obvious talent, and relative low-profile. Sleeve notes paint the punishing project…