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CD Review: Matt Pond PA, Last Light
I don't know who chose today as the release date for Matt Pond PA's new album, Last Light, but the music couldn't be more perfectly suited to the waning days of summer. From the painfully timely title track to the gentle acceptingness of the final song, "It's Not So Bad at All," the music perfectly captures that mix of depression and optimism that has plagued my summer-fall transition since my first year of school.
Not surprisingly, I picked this record as one of my September must haves.
CD Review: Feist, The Reminder
When I first picked up Canadian singer-songwriter Feist's breakthrough album, 2004's Let it Die, I thought it was perfectly pleasant background music. Her '70s-infused, lounge-y songs seemed perfect for a dinner party, or for playing faintly while I flipped through a magazine. Only the catchy "Mushaboom" really made me sit up and take notice, wedging itself in my head for days on end.
CD Review: CocoRosie, The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn
There is a whole breed of baby-voiced women — Joanna Newsom, Satomi Matsuzaki of Deerhoof, and, to a lesser extent, Bjork — whose singing style suggests that of a tiny girl stranded on an amusement park ride. When the creepy/cutesy effect works, it's stunning, and when it doesn't, it can just be grating. That can definitely be said of CocoRosie, comprised of sisters Sierra and Bianca Casady, whose third album, The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn, hit stores this week.
CD Review: Bright Eyes, Cassadaga
If you're a regular BuzzSugar reader, you know how much I've been looking forward to the new Bright Eyes album — that is, very much, for months. Each new track that trickled out only heightened my anticipation. If the whole album was as well-crafted as the fiddle-laden "Four Winds," I thought, then Cassdaga would do nothing but rule.
CD Review: Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha
In the din of hype surrounding the new albums by Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse, and the forthcoming Wilco and Bright Eyes, you might miss the quiet genius of Andrew Bird's new release, Armchair Apocrypha. But after spending a few weeks with the album, which hits stores today, I'm already willing to say it's likely to end up on my year-end best list.
The hippest thing ever to happen to the pizzicato violin, Andrew Bird is just as adept at crafting string-laden pop songs as he is writing rhymes so sing-song, it takes you a moment to hear the words.
CD Review: The Besnard Lakes, Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse
Listen to The Besnard Lakes' "Disaster," and I guarantee you, the first musical reference that comes to mind will be the Beach Boys. All of the elements are there: the languid falsetto, lightly woven harmonies, and muted brass and sleepy surf strings. But then you realize: The Besnard Lakes actually sound nothing like the Beach Boys.
CD Review: Explosions in the Sky, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone
Explosions in the Sky convey all of the vastness of Texas with none of the twang. In fact, the Texas quartet's stirring and soaring instrumental music — which often serves as the soundtrack to the "Friday Night Lights" series and the preceding movie — sounds more like Iceland's Sigur Ros or Canada's Godspeed You Black Emperor! than anything ever to come out of the Lone Star state.
CD Review: Bloc Party, A Weekend In the City
The weekend in the city that Bloc Party envisions on its sophomore album is ruled by party-ready riffs and thumping beats. But beneath the pop-punk surface of A Weekend in the City lurks a sort of disheveled, drug-fueled dystopia, giving the melodies a much-needed edge.
Fans will appreciate that the follow-up to Silent Alarm never veers too far from its predecessor's path, with frontman Kele Okerere's regal, slightly overwrought vocals coating some of the most soaring guitar work in rock.
CD Review: Julie Doiron, Woke Myself Up
I'm pretty hot or cold when it comes to music by girls with guitars. I love me some Cat Power and Carole King, but too often, folksy female singers rely too much on pretty poetry and gently strummed chords and not enough on innovative songwriting.
But Julie Doiron's just-released album, Woke Myself Up, manages to avoid those pitfalls.
CD Review: Menomena, Friend and Foe
Menomena is so weird it makes me giddy. The Portland, OR, band named its first album I Am the Fun Blame Monster, which is an anagram of "the first Menomena album." It favors baritone sax almost as much as it uses guitars, and the band even wrote its own software to compose its utterly bizarre songs.
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