Berated

The master of the dark and bizarre, David Lynch, continues his foray into the world of music with Crazy Clown Time, his first record as a solo artist. So far, it sounds like a meshing of his film’s soundtracks (Angelo Badalamenti) with grimy industrial-electro fit for a futuristic dystopian society. So yeah, it would fit

This EP is excellently done, and every song except the title track is a wonderful, drone and glitch-filled pop delight. Delicate and graceful melodies slip between the cracks of digital wreckage, or sometimes emerge from the careful piling of glitch and drones. There is an arc to Mario Gonzalez’s Lindsay Lohan Likes Blood EP. Gonzalez [...]

As an obsessive music collector, Lavis Blake hits two of my pet preoccupations: differentiating types of non-singing, and bands whose output ends up on a single disc padded out with demos on a “record label” that’s usually just a record store in the town where the band came from. Who can argue with such stalwarts [...]

Black Partridge comprises two brothers from Illinois. The duo have a unique sound that fuses lo-fi rock and pop with caressing sentiments of shoegaze and dream-pop. The older brother, Vito, plays the bass guitar while Mick takes over vocals and guitar. While the pair has yet to release an album, they have four songs available [...]

The Eversons are highlights in the fusion of past and present that is art-punk, a genre most recently propelled by names like Art Brut and The Rakes. Both groups debuted in 2005 with a thickly accented, spontaneously wry vocal wit backed by tremolo-heavy riffs and mechanical rhythms in a style akin to bands like Gang [...]

After a rising loop the record begins: “Yo it’s therapy, most of us that I know got problems / Why you think we frowning when we puttin’ out these albums?” It’s an ideal manifesto for The Side Effect EP, a concise introduction to the potent concoction of misgivings, neuroses, anxieties and swagger to come. Though [...]

If you weren’t in Hoboken this past Sunday, you missed a great live performance. The Walkmen played for free as part of the hMag Music Fest 2011. The backdrop was breathtaking; the Manhattan skyline at night was on full display. Bands played all day and the Fest featured School of Seven Bells as an opener [...]

Sunsettes are a Tampa-based duo specializing in funk-tinged indie-rock. Comprised of Nathan Kozyra and Michael Schlein, Sunsettes quietly released their debut Coup de Grace last December. Their compositions are frequently led by acoustics and keys, with Kozyra assuming a vocal delivery incorporating both stream-of-conscious narratives and straightforward romantic metaphors. Although the instrumental arsenal is mainly [...]

Many of us have a sweet spot for The Beach Boys, or most Brian Wilson recordings for that matter. While their early – and generally most popular – hits are not to be overlooked, the greatness of the group fully emerged with the 1965 release of Today!.  This classic marks the beautiful crevice between early [...]

Video games are rarely a relevant topic on this site, but the newly released Rocksmith should make any musician curious – even if they never touched a game console in their life. The premise is excitably simple: plug in a (real) guitar to your Xbox 360 or PS3, and then get immersed in customizable features [...]