Jónsi
Go

In light of recent events I think that the cause of the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull is partly due to the release of Go, Jónsi's first solo record without his band mates, and do you want to know why? Well then I'll tell you.

Volcanoes are largely at the mercy of the shifting tectonic plates on top of which our world sits and which are, according to scientists, constantly slipping and sliding over each other. When two plates collide there is often an earthquake or a build up of pressure and tension which can lead to a more devastating quake and may reanimate a volcano. I propose that there was enough tension in the Sigur Rós camp when Jónsi announced that he would be doing the next batch of songs he had written without them. It is the sort of statement that, when made by your dominant creative force...

Coheed and Cambria
Year of the Black Rainbow

It’s almost impossible to refer to one’s self as a prog rock fan without immediately having scorn and derision heaped upon us defenseless nerds. The Dungeons & Dragons shit as well as the neo-classical guitar stylings will never, ever truly be popular. But what the Naysayers refuse to realize is that good music comes in all forms. The best of the best in prog rock, at their peaks, never forgot that tunefulness, hooks, and some sort of commentary on the human condition make great songs. Before they went nuts in 1982, Rush always remembered to throw in a killer solo or give the listener some Rand while shrieking about the Temples of Syrinx. More recently, The Mars Volta managed to sound depressing as all hell during “Televators”, even if most of that song doesn’t really make a lot of literal sense. And of course, we have Coheed and Cambria. While they’ve never been “Prog”...

Kate Nash
My Best Friend Is You.

One of the most interesting iTunes Live Sessions, an odd, short-lived interview/live set exclusive iTunes used to run in its salad days, was Fiona Apple’s. Being an unabashed fan of Fiona’s music, I can say that the previous statement is loaded with bias. But, subjectivity aside, Fiona’s interview portions held a decent little trinket, one that I carry around with me whenever I talk about femme-pop that doesn’t seem oriented towards a man. Apple said that the song “Extraordinary Machine” was a “pep talk to myself,” a ripped out diary entry that just managed to make its way to the marquee spot on her best album. The reason I cite Fiona (other than the obvious female connection) in the beginning of my review for British tart Kate Nash’s sophomore album, My Best Friend is You, is because most of the songs on the record feel like pep talks—jumpy, energetic, scribbled down pep talks.
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The Knife/Planningtorock/Mt. Sims
Tomorrow, in a Year

As the Knife release an experimental, avant-garde album which takes a while to truly 'get' we here at The Milk Carton thought it was appropriate to treat the review of the same album with our own brand of avant-garde.

The disco kids all arrived at the same time in their droves, wearing their colourful neon glow clothes and making a lot of noise for such a small group. Many of them had glo-sticks which they were eager to snap and they all wore comfortable footwear as they were up for a dance. They queued in fervid excitement outside the venue and cheered when the doors opened and they were allowed into the lobby of the grand old theatre. Their clamour and noise was quashed somewhat when they were shown to their seats and handed programmes and were shushed by tuxedo clad elder gentlemen whenever they made a sound.

Diego, one of the...

Freeway and Jake One
The Stimulus Package

Before we get into whether or not The Stimulus Package is any good I think a little time should be spent in praise of the packaging. The liner notes come on the back of bank notes bearing the images of Freeway and Jake One, held together by a strip of paper giving the whole thing the look of a stack of cash straight from a bank vault. There is also a wallet which cases the CD, a card to access instrumental versions of all of the tunes here and with a bit of careful manipulation the bank notes can be stashed inside the wallet and folded up neatly for when you want to store it in your CD tower. I think it is perhaps the best packaging I have ever seen.

The care and pride that went into the external design fortunately translates to the music which it encases. The beats...

Erykah Badu
New Amerykah Pt. 2: Return of the Ankh

Pleased to Meet Badu, Again

Something has happened to Erykah Badu since the release of the first instalment of this New Amerykah trilogy, and one only needs to glance at the introductory notes to the CD booklet to realise that. Whilst Part One was politicised and poignant and cemented Badu's reputation as the hottest female on the soul-hop block, earning her a reputation for outspoken belief in her thoughts and herself and working within a framework of seventies funk riffs, Part Two sees a changed woman who seems unsure what she thinks of herself let alone anything else delivering some soulful, safer songs and musings on the topic of love.

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Badu has recently suffered a break-up as songs like "20 Feet Tall" and "Window Seat" deal with the aftermath of a relationship;...

Laura Marling
I Speak Because I Can

Stranger In a Strange Land.

Does Americana belong exclusively to Americans? The nature of a scene such as Americana comes directly into question at the feet of British folk-phenom Laura Marling. The recently turned 21-year-old puts out her second album, I Speak Because I Can, and manages to evoke Johnny Cash’s later moments, raising questions about whether Britain can have its own mildly interesting folksy tradition in the school of Guthries and Tweedys.

That previous duo is obviously far too stratospheric to warrant Marling’s inclusion, but she certainly is off to a good, albeit infantile, start. “Devil Spoke,” the infectious opener that wouldn’t sound out of place as the opening music for Deadwood, contains the interesting line “many dreams and many miles/ brought you to me on this sunny isle.” Marling makes evident the admission that she...

David Byrne & Fatboy Slim
Here Lies Love

They say that to get where you need to go you will probably have to destroy your heroes along the way, but I never really thought that it would come to this; after carefully listening to Here Lies Love, the story of Imelda Marcos, famously shoe obsessed second lady of the Philippines during the 80s, I must now concede that not only has one of my personal heroes (and to make matters worse, one of my dad’s idols) lost his touch, but he might well have turned into a clueless jerk too, and worse still, he may have always been like this, he just managed to get away with it before because of the high quality of his work with Talking Heads and Brian Eno.

Reading his promotional literature for this overblown and some might argue unnecessary concept album which is in essence Byrne’s attempt to answer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita with his own musical based on a powerful...

Fang Island
Fang Island

O, pure unbridled joy! I must reach for my quill and scribe immediately, this music leaves me feeling compelled to review it, and I am helpless against my impulses!

Imagine joy on an epic scale; not epic in the sense of dragons, hoardes of marauding Orks lining up against legions of noble Elves to do battle for a fictitious land, nor in the sense of spaceships blasting the be-Jesus out of small helpless planets in a continuing quest for the domination of the entire universe. Epic joy does not have a force of evil to overcome, epic joy merely exists for and of itself, like the feeling that God must have felt when he finally got a spark after millennia of rubbing sticks together and initiated the Big Bang, then sat back with his pipe and slippers and watched the history of the universe unfold before him. That is epic joy.

Epic joy is also harmonised guitars, foot on the...

Sam Amidon
I See The Sign

Note from the Editor: This is a special and personal review for the album from guest contributor Sybilla Poortman, who also offered us the initial TMC Requiem feature for Ben Frost's "Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water". It is untraditional yet thoroughly thought-provoking and inspiring.

In times like these, when I ponder abandoning the Catholic Church, I need someone or something to remind me that true spirituality is to be found within ourselves. A church that tells people what to do and where to abstain from, meanwhile covering up their own mistakes and wrong-doings, cannot be my church.

Sam Amidon deals in spirituality. From the blood-pumping heart beat of How Come That Blood onwards, his new album is like a catalogue of human emotions. Some reviewers...

Gonjasufi
A Sufi and a Killer

The following are the thoughts and beliefs of a foolish idiot and in no way represent the views and beliefs of this web site. In no way does this web site want to promote or encourage irresponsible behaviour. It is not advisable to try any of the "hints" or "suggestions" implicit in the piece at home or anywhere else in the real world.

Stick this in your car and smoke it!! I realised how much time I have spent in my new car and how many miles I have covered since purchasing it a few months ago when I found myself describing almost all of the music that I have really enjoyed this year as 'great driving music', and, you've guessed it, Gonjasufi's A Sufi and a Killer is no exception, the only difference being that it is absolutely brilliant, my personal album of the year so far, enjoyable outside of a motorised vehicle but best enjoyed thoroughly...