Why Are There Mountains is one of the real gems from the 2000s with melodic vocals, plenty of dissonance, some frantic guitar parts that contribute to the overall build and crescendo of the tunes and emotion. It sounds like a mix between Sonic Youth and Modest Mouse. Best songs: Cold Spring, ... And the Hazy Sea, Indiana, Share, What Dogs See, Wind Phoenix (Proper Name), Living North

Apparently this will be a wildly unpopular opinion, but this music is busy, the vocals are all over the map tonally and sound like they are competing, rather than complimenting each other, and there aren't many vocal melodies one might want to revisit more than once unless you like the random and loud backing Ahhhs sprinkled throughout, most jarringly on Useful Chamber. Without knowing anything about this album or the band, upon hearing "Stillness Is the Move," I immediately thought, ... read more

If not for some of the meandering melodies on the backend of this self-titled release, I would just go ahead and consecrate the Grammatics' self-titled release, with its Muse/Mars Volta reverberations, as one of the best one-off albums in alternative rock history. The first seven tracks are something to hear, and they comprise of one of the best A sides of a record that I've heard in quite some time. The second half is more challenging, and it might be brilliant as well, but after a couple ... read more

As I say with a great many albums, Dark Days/Light Years overstays its welcome a bit. Some of these songs sound like tripped out versions of MGMT tunes, but nonetheless, the first eight tracks, once one gets accustomed to the unusual musical style and oddness of it all, are quite catchy and accessible, if a bit repetitive at times (inconvenience!). And lyrically, I don't know. Some of this sounds like word soup, and a lot of the tunes don't have the same feeling and immediacy behind them as, ... read more

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix has some good songs on it like Litzomania, 1901, Fences, Love Like a Sunset, Part 2 and Lasso, but I think some of these tracks rely too heavily on repeated words and phrases - Rome, Rome, Rome, sick, sick, sick, trip, trip, trip, farewell, well, well, well. It gets to be a bit much after awhile, but as this is apparently categorized as pop as opposed to alternative rock, I guess ad nauseum repetition appeals to the mainstream. That said, though, both the production ... read more

More white guys screaming about hating themselves in a genre that was bland and played out years before this record was released in 2009. The issue I have with this genre is that there are little, to no, nuances in many of the vocal melodies. The Used start to have something interesting in the opening delicate melody in Kissing You Goodbye, but then just devolve into the typical screamy, unimaginative, drawn out notes later in the song. Some of this could be forgiven if the music included, ... read more

The first half of Alter the Ending is stronger than the last half. Indeed, the album opens with six excellent songs - Get Me Right, Until Morning, Every Learns from Disaster, the standout Belle of the Boulevard, I Know About You and Alter the Ending. Even Now is a pretty tune, but I find the lyrics to be a bit cringe. Other noteworthy songs on the backside of the record are The Motions, No News Is Bad News and the touching closer, Hell on the Throat.

This is an odd record. The first track, Underdog, sounds like an Oasis song, and the second song, Where Did All the Love Go?, sounds like a quasi-Beatles song. The rest of the album is indie-rockariffic. I don't know what the hell is going on with track 3, Swarfiga, or why it's there, but beyond these two minutes of beats and sounds, the record has some pretty enjoyable tunes. Even though the first two tracks might be the best on the record from a melody standpoint, Kasabian actually sounds the ... read more

Ursa Major is a solid album from Third Eye Blind. Since I haven't listened to any of their songs beyond the radio hits, I didn't know what to expect, except that the band has a certain songwriting style. Sometimes I think they try to fit too many words into their verses, so that it sounds kind of crowded lyrically, but many of the songs do provide some musical space to break up the sonic space. The best part of this record, though, are the anthemic chorus melodies in songs like Sharp Knife, Can ... read more

This is a pretty decent record from the Meat Puppets. This is the first one of theirs that I have listened to since Monsters. I had planned on doing the band's whole catalog, but the records were so inconsistent - a couple early albums were unlistenable - so I gave up. But the band put together eight solid songs for Sewn Together, including the title track, Blanket of Weeds, I'm Not You, Sapphire, Rotten Shame, Go To Your Head, Clone, Smoke and Nursery Rhyme. The album gets a bit weaker toward ... read more

Ladyfinger (ne) is a preposterous name for a band. To skirt a copyright issue with a group already named Ladyfingers (or The Ladyfingers), this Ladyfinger of Nebraska, just added (ne), which I thought was a nod to personality typing until I looked it up. I would have just found a different word to avoid confusion.

Anyhow, as for the record itself, oof. Alex Young, with Consequence of Sound, gave it a generally favorable review, concluding that since the hard-driving songs were good to exercise ... read more

When I pause in the middle of listening to a record and exclaim out loud to an empty room, "Jesus christ! How many more songs is this album?!?" - well, that's not a good sign. These songs sound like they could be B-sides from Wilco's Being There. Given the people who are involved with this project, including most of The Decemberists and R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, one would think I would like it, but Scott McCaughey's songs sound lifeless and empty. Buck must have been bored to tears playing ... read more

The reason I make these album lists and sort through all kinds of alternative rock music, ranging from truly memorable, melodious and/or interesting to "I-never-want-to-hear-this-again, is to find gems like this. Julian Plenti, a.k.a. Paul Banks of Interpol fame, hits more than he misses in this, his first solo effort. I actually enjoyed songs like Unwind and Fly As You Might more for their musical arrangements than the melodies, especially the trumpet part in Unwind. Elsewhere on the ... read more

Well, this album took a noticeable nosedive after track six didn't it? The first five songs - No One Loves Me and Neither Do I; Mind Eraser, No Chaser; New Fang; Dead End Friends; and Elephants - have pretty good vocal melodies and the music kicks. Track six, Scumbag Blues, isn't as strong in the melody category, but it has some killer guitar parts. After that, the vocals kind of get in a rut, and there isn't much that's interesting happening in the music except riff-city, as another reviewer ... read more

I'm not really sure why this record of covers featuring the likes of Kate Moss, Liv Tyler, Christina Aguilera and Leonard Cohen exists. Just because, I guess. The opening track, which sounds the most Lemonheady of the bunch, is probably the best tune. The acoustic-alternative take on Aguilera's Beautiful and Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye with Tyler are worth a listen.

Backspacer wasn't quite the return to form that Pearl Jam fans were hoping for when it was released back in 2009. I usually don't write reviews from the handful of bands that I list as my favorites unless I think I can be fairly impartial about it. In this case, I think enough time has passed to look at Pearl Jam's discography with some perspective.

PJ fans like myself clamored for years to get to hear another Ten, Vs., or hell, Vitalogy, and by that, I don't just mean hearing the band write ... read more

Continuing with a rough stretch of albums from 2009 that teeter somewhere between mediocre to I-never-want-to-hear-this-again comes an album from Cracker that settles all too comfortably into the mediocre category. Whether it's the uninteresting, uninspired vocal melodies to the equally uninspired rhythm section that rarely does anything noteworthy except keep time - save for guitar solos on Hand Me My Inhaler, Time Machine and I Could Be Wrong, I Could Be Right, but these sound more obligatory ... read more

The songs vary from just plain old skippable, with hardly a melody or anything else that would make me want to listen again, to cringe and annoying. Black Hearted Love showed promise. Songs like Sixteen, Fifteen, Fourteen, Leaving California and April made me visibly wince. The Soldier, depressing as it may be, strips almost everything away except Harvey and a ukulele, and maybe that was for the best - just a simple arrangement and melody turned out one of the better tracks on this record. The ... read more

I tried to listen to all of The Resistance years ago but gave up, thinking maybe I just didn't "get it." I just took another crack at it, and I still don't get it. Undisclosed Desires, Uprising and Resistance, the best tracks on this record, are decent enough songs, but they are all inferior to Knights of Cydonia, Starlight and Supermassive Black Hole. Guiding Light might be the next best song as a showcase for Matt Bellamy's amazing voice, but everything else on here sounds like a ... read more

I was about ready to give The Century of Self, the first record that I had heard from ... And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, a very high rating, but the album started to lose me after track 8, Luna Park. I thought the first half of the record perfectly blended accessible melodies within a progressive rock framework, but - and this is all subjective obviously - but I didn't care for the melodies on the song Insatiable (One) and Insatiable (Two). I really disliked the singsong, warbling ... read more