Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Here We Rest

It’s unfortunate Jason Isbell and any ventures the man may have will always be associated with his tenure in Drive-By Truckers. The association is understandable - Isbell only wrote eight songs over the course of three albums, and each one of these songs not only grapples for the title of “Best Song on the Album”, but many of the songs (“Goddamn Lonely Love”, “Outfit”) vie for the honor of the best song in the entire Truckers oeuvre. Some, if not many, feel the Truckers kept the wrong band member after his divorce from DBT bassist Shonna Tucker, but regardless of what could have been, Isbell’s soldiered on. Here We Rest is...

Marilyn Manson, Little Richard's balls of fire, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Elvis’ hips, every generation has its controversial stars and the media never learn, from one act to the next, that the more shocking and appalling you announce to the world that they are, the more the kids are going to want to hear their music out of curiosity more than anything else. Tyler and the Odd Future gang are currently riding the wave of some seriously negative media attention from conservative groups and worried parents, but with every new horror story that is broadcast their popularity amongst their peers is only set to grow. But is the hype really worth it the end product? Is there any talent hidden in amongst the expletives and rape scenarios or is Tyler really poisoning the minds of his generation?

Goblin will answer that question for you, one way or another. Tyler has made no effort to tone things down since Bastard or to censor himself in the hope of having an enormous...

Manchester Orchestra
Simple Math

Andy? Meet Isaac. Isaac? Andy.

One of the biggest driving forces behind a generation gap is perception. This should come as a surprise to no one, but that simple fact gets lost in the mix quite a bit. For example: Three’s Company was wildly successful during its initial run, largely due to openly defying social mores by having a character that claimed to be gay, Don Knotts’s crazy, bugged-out eyes, and Suzanne Somers’s jigglier charms. However, when viewed today, we can see the show for what it largely is - a series of stereotypes thrown into well-worn sitcom situations. Questions remain, though: Why did our parents find the antics of Jack Tripper so amusing? Why do we now find the show’s shenanigans trite and unamusing? The answer, of course, is perspective. What was new to them is tired and cliche to us. The same thing happens with music. When we as listeners come...

Fleet Foxes
Helplessness Blues

Many bands mark a new direction in their sound as Fleet Foxes do on “The Shrine/An Argument”, with a largely tuneless saxophone solo; The Mars Volta, Ihsahn, Blur and more I could name if I had more time and less important things to do with it, have all thrown this in to their difficult second, third, fourth and fifth albums in an attempt to do something different. But from the opening bar of “Montezuma” which smacks of Bob Dylan’s “Buckets of Rain” (not the only Dylan sound-a-like here, check out “Lorelai”’s similarity to “4th Time Around”), through the sun drenched pastoral harmonies which could have easily been Simon and Garfunkel castaways and on to Helplessness Blues’ finale it is clear that not much else has changed in the Fleet Fox camp since 2008’s self titled debut and Sun Giant EP.
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Foo Fighters
Wasting Light

For me, the Foo Fighters are a band that is inextricably attached to the 1990s. The formation of the band out of the ashes of a rock powerhouse, the rise to power on the backs of a series of impeccably written singles, and their usage of wildly creative and original videos all scream 90s, but somewhere around the turn of the century, the band lost its way. Dave Grohl wasn’t coming across as the irrepressible scamp that everybody loved on record anymore, and the band’s songs became blander and drearier. One By One, In Your Honor, and Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace all had some decent singles strewn across the map, but nothing the band did seemed to gel. The hooks come and go on those albums, but the band seemed to be on auto-pilot through the ButtRock era of the early aughts. Everything Grohl was doing outside of the band was going gangbusters - Probot, drumming for Queens of the Stone Age - but,...

The Pains of Bing Pure at Heart
Belong

Pop is a word that we music critics tend to throw about carelessly in an effort to champion our current favourite artist’s right to airplay on FM radio stations. “Metallic hardcore with pop sensibilities” might be an example of throwing the word pop around a little too carelessly. What we usually mean when we say a song is poppy is that it is pleasing to the ear and more often than not has a catchy chorus or some element to it that sticks in our heads long after the last embers have faded and died. It doesn’t mean that it is likely to become popular.

Rihanna, for example, is incredibly popular, as is Beyonce and Britney, so popular in fact that I do not need to bother with last names for you to know who I am referring to. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are not that popular, at least not on that level. For a start, their name is extremely long and...

Yellowcard
When You’re Through Thinking, Say Yes

It’s only now at the ripe, old age of 27 do I feel I have the wisdom and perspective to begin understanding the phenomenon I refer to as “The AP.net Explosion”. As much as we may like to bag on the site, there’s no denying the influence - I know I certainly haven’t broken any bands nearly as large as Fall Out Boy. Like all true successes, the Explosion was a mixture of content and timing. Those born between 1984 and 1990 were subject to some incredible swings in the world of popular music: one of my earliest memories from the world of rock was seeing Guns ‘n Roses’ “You Could Be Mine” in Terminator 2. In a few years grunge had come and gone, and those still chained to the radio and / or MTV were damned to the likes of LFO, Backstreet Boys, Creed, Limp Bizkit, and eventually, Avril Lavigne. But not all was lost, and The Internet came to the rescue of all of us searching for...

Whether it be lyrics such as “You can count on me” from the opening track of the same name, the fact that much of Tomboy sounds as though it was recorded in a cathedral by a choir in perfect harmony with itself or the transcendent nature of the music - hypnotic, mesmerising sounds approaching and passing like floating spectres of the past - there is something undeniably spiritual about the music that Noah Lennox makes as Panda Bear. It is almost alien, otherworldly and sure to unsettle you and your expectations, but it remains undeniably beautiful.

I don’t think I ever did manage to put my finger on what it was about Person Pitch that made it so appealing, I just simply stuck it near the top of my albums of the decade list and felt that it rightly belonged there. It was different from almost everything else at the time; it tapped into a childlike innocence and fond re-imaginings of a simpler time drowned in...

Raekwon
Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang

The Wu-Tang Clan are one of the more reliable names in the hip-hop business. They are like Ronseal Weather Resistant Paint which is paint designed to resist the weather; they do exactly what they say on the tin. Wherever you see the Wu-Tang label, or registered trademark, you know (with the exception of a couple of curve balls thrown by Ghostface Killah) what you can expect from the shiny disc that it is stamped on to; you can expect some martial arts movie excerpts, hardcore head-nodding beats and some of the darkest tales from the gangsta life spun with more than a little hyperbole by men that take great pride in letting you know that they live it.

Every now and again one or more of their number drops a really great record that receives acclaim from...

Skeetones
Retrospektive

Electronica is a difficult pill to swallow. I say that only because the genre itself has limits. Every great record finds a template and barrels through a dozen songs that crescendo but never seem to break into anything independent of the sound the artist covets. Let me ask you this – how often has an electronica album surprised you? Probably not often.

The subgenres that have evolved in the past few years rely on their distinctive sound to gather listeners – dubstep, chillwave, dance punk. That’s not to say the music is trite or boring, but it’s easy to understand how eventually these artists hit a brick wall in terms of creative evolution. Even the champions of the whole genre, Daft Punk, crafted their success around a very distinctive sound. When you pop in a Daft Punk record, you know what you’re going to get.

For this very reason, I’ve decided Skeetones are taking a...

Dirty Beaches
Badlands

"The concept behind Badlands, is about a man who is possessed by the road. My mother used to say to me, "You walk at night often enough, sooner or later you'll run into a ghost." I think it's very true, as the devil comes in all forms. Just here to fuck your shit up. Side A is all bangers, with songs about leaving, and being chased on the road, and driving a burning car into oblivion. Side B is ballads, and dirges laced with murder and lament."

Those are the words of Alex Zhang Hungtai in his press release for Badlands, his first major(ish) album under the guise of his one man project, Dirty Beaches. In his succinct description of his work he has pretty much done me out of a job as those six sentences sum up this record perfectly. Side one is snarling Stooges inspired rockers recorded onto tape by the sound of it, and side two flips your...