You know those old depression era country songs like "The Big Rock Candy Mountains" where the singers always ramble up a gentle, naive utopia in a with simple witticisms and corny ideals? Well, J.J.Cale revitalises these in a modern coat with a fresh levity and usually the old methods. It's old wine in new bottles really, but at least it's good wine. Stemming from a genre I'd like to label as Canadian Country, Cale invites a folksy spirit in country as classic as it gets, except for ... read more

Every mistuned or ill fitting note that ole' Scrapper plays shapes my rusty mouth a little bit more in the form of a downwards curve. I know and feel that the man loved to play and that he couldn't care less if his guitar sounds like a howling cat. Maybe that's taking it a step too far but his trusty old instrument sure sounds like an obsolete set of strings. Yet he's from that same tradition where the best blues artists came from -- he's a junkyard blues artist. He's a sole soul playing on his ... read more

For Tyler Onkoma I imagine, his music is his therapy. I'll explain: hard-faced self confrontation is too painful a feat for most of us to commit to, so we don't like to use clean mirrors but we like to bounce our flaws on a few walls and let it reflect on us in creative and interpretive ways. Tyler wraps up many of the complications he doesn't quite like to explore in his album, IGOR where he assumes a persona to reflect his pain and misunderstanding of everyone around him and if you understand ... read more

Songs for the deaf has one of the most genius intros of all time considering what we'll be hearing next. What it does for me is three things (A) Anticipation of expectations based on what we know of the band (B) Unpredictability of when the volume is going to go to eleven (C) It's just a lighthearted corny introduction. Now try to be all of these a second time. After this it blasts of and never ceases to be sledgehammer hardrock, carrying a new different voice for each different song.
Queens ... read more

I usually admire it when western artists allow themselves to be influenced by foreign music and bring it on home to their own albums. Here Amanaz does the opposite, they -- from a third world country in the 70s -- incorporate western music in their own culture and it's sweet! As if they were a bunch of Zambians who visited Woodstock once and were stuck in the hippie rock trance as a curse.
But in all honesty, they're very very understanding of how rock thills but also calms down and they're ... read more

LCD Soundsystem is a systematic clockwork -- A hybrid of swift machinery and melodic hooks that always stay understated. It uses an old trick in the book, repetetiveness of rhytms as a backdrop like painters use a textured canvas but here this backdrop changes gradually, allowing the artist to build from an evolving platform that enriches and fluctuates throughout the album.

This is an album that understands the genre of Dance music very well, Dance was a genre popularised in the 90s now ... read more

An ethereal touch amid their distorted roughness always was the main appeal for me with Gorillaz. A little bit of that essence might be lost in "Plastic Beach" partly because it's crowded with a great deal of guest appearances. But that lost essence makes place for a different tone that we're used to from them.
Don't get me wrong, the album and main elements are still drenched in the casual, effortless style of their Gorilla-esqueness but I sense a greater sense of urgency underlying ... read more

Harvest caresses -- If there ever was an album signature of Neil Young, I'll point towards this one. It shows great promise , it's gentle , soft and it defines acoustic. But no matter how great parts of Harvest even can be, it never stabilises for me. A great track might be followed by a mediocre one and vice versa without any indications. The songs vary from intimate and quiet folk songs to songs that sound to sound like they belong in a Disney musical.

No matter how bad it is in terms of ... read more

As it opens with a short song of throbbing experimental sounds, Grae establishes itself as a godly surrealist album that takes pokes at so much genres and it spirals down each path it takes in the best ways possible. Like an observance of a musical style, a replication and an amazing piece of music that comes in tripping and stretching out that genre.
In that regard it feels like a small scaled epos that feels like something that cashes in on it's weirder elements and wrongs instead of the ... read more

For all records : I listened "I disagree" without any context on who the artist "Poppy" is. From what I can comprehend it presents a duality between a kind of Disney-perfect-fit sweetheart persona and a demon within or vice versa for that matter. That concept translates well to music, with the genre shifting gears from a metal -- couple genre shifts in between -- and a parodying overly catchy popsong. I can't help but think that sometimes the genre is patched together with a ... read more

This is what authenticity sounds like to me. Ironic statement considering this fantastic album are a bunch of British blokes producing a variety of country-blues at the peak of their careers. Why I love exile on main street so much is because it just makes my feet tap , shoulders shaking and brain reminiscing. Everything in this album has a lived in optimism and not too perfect swing in it's bloodflow. The old saloon shack piano beating notes throughout the album, the loosened up guitar and the ... read more

Nas" Debut Illmatic opens with the sound of a train passing by followed by some generalized hoods mumbling on the streets. This establishes the rule in Illmatic that what you hear is about the surroundings and capturing a specific place and feeling and throughout the album it never even momentarily strays away from that groundwork.
Illmatic is an album made with a streetfeel youth yet with a sense of mature professionality which is an almost impossible feat. Nas has never recaptured the ... read more

Kind of Blue confirms, for me, that this kind of Jazz is about nothing but itself yet it still tells an ambiguous story to me. I mean that as a sincere compliment towards not only Kind of Blue but towards its whole genre. Made in the late 50s by the legendary artist Miles Davis, surrounding himself with peers like John Coltrane and Bill Evans just to name a few. Technical full control is on display here, but it's not the obsessive control of hitting every mark just right. It's the absolute ... read more

What more is there to say about Abbey Road? The highs in the album are incredible , and the lows are....well, there are no real lows for me on Abbey Road. It's an album almost everybody knows despite it being 50 years of age, even if it's just the iconic cover hose. The young revolutionary prodigies : The Beatles, were evolving constantly throughout their short career and here they must be in full evolution if there ever is one possible. Here they are playful and soft , cool and confident. ... read more

The thing about Pink Season is that it's fucking hilarious... but its routine doesn't last long. This highly iconic / ironic album is made with the intention of being as vulgar and shameless as they come, and it promises on that. All music is overproduced, terribly autotuned and mixed with an ounce of outrage, of course this "critisism" should be taken with a grain of salt for the reasoning that it doesn't even matter in an album like this.
Some tracks work on their own, and they do ... read more

"You know it's a folk song when it's never new and it never gets old" remarks Llewyn Davis. This is entirely true for Folksinger by beatpoet ragtimer Dave Van Ronk. A hairy man dragging his guitar 'round Greenwich Village with a guttural yet rich voice and a plainspoken vocabulary. He, for me, is a great staple of the great indie-folk artists : A commonman with a heart full o' music.
His album "folksinger" isn't devoid of any substance or originality though. He sings of the ... read more

This is an album that feels almost too personal to be even ever heard but another person but the artist. And that's a sort of acclaim I wouldn't spread around further than the albums of Daniel Johnston. All adjectives that I could use to described "Hi, How are you" are rather interpretations than praise or criticism. An album that isn't for everyone, that's for sure but if it is even slightly for you, you'll be touched by its sincerity no matter what stands in your pragmatic way.
This ... read more

Before I type out any statement I must state that I'm very selective in taste regarding Metal, even more picky than my Jazz or my Country. My "hot take" is that most of Metallica just isn't that great , with their debut album (nicknamed the black album) included despite being some of their better work. It never really connected with me except for bits and pieces in Master of Puppets, their later album in which they really flourish from time to time.
That being said I absolutely think ... read more

Two voices : one, a high pitched and shaking brittle of a voice, the other a fruity much lower voice to counterbalance. Heart of the Congos is all about harmony. It's a twist in the genre as it strays away from the overly-exotic happiness that Reggae music usually is but it carries more soul than most Reggae ever does.
The two voices I described are distanced and seem like they guard over the music rather than blend in. The music itself and vocals are harmonic yes, but not in the 50/50 kind of ... read more

How does one review something as Modern Jester? Well the answer is a classic one : one can not, but one will try anyway.
Modern Jester is a stretch of feeling and a vacuum of unsettling energy yet its grand in craft and self-knowledge, meticulous in precision and effective in intention. It could be argued this isn't even music, the genre it is listed under even labels it as : noise. But can noise not be music once geared together into a clusterfuck of assembly : It is never remotely melodious ... read more