Sing-sing Feels Like Summer Ep Bella Union By: Eric G.
Sing-Sing is a duo featuring ex-Lush guitarist Emma Anderson and singer Lisa O’Neill, who has lent her voice to tracks by Locust and The Mad Professor. This EP features just three blithe tracks that mix sixties soul with light electronics. The focus [...]

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Men's Recovery Project Bolides Over Basra Load By: Eric G.
Men’s Recovery Project is the warped brainchild of ex-Born Against members, Sam McPheeters and Neil Burke. The band has released eleven records on seven different labels since the demise of Born Against in the early nineties but has never released a proper full-length [...]

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Wolf Colonel Vikings Of Mint K By: Eric G.
Wolf Colonel pumps out fifteen songs in less than thirty minutes with lo-fi, garage-punk bravado. Led by vocalist Jason Anderson, this four-piece is a power punk machine mixing the brevity and melody of early Guided By Voices (before the power ballads) with the assault [...]

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Pan American 360 Business/360 Bypass Kranky By: Eric G.
Pan American is the nom de plume for Mark Nelson, the guitarist and sometimes singer for the experimental post-rock outfit Labradford. With Pan American Nelson gets to explore the ambient side of his electronic pursuits, where Labradford rarely ventures. With only six songs [...]

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Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci Spanish Dance Troupe Mantra/beggars Banquet By: Robert H.
Every once in a while I have the embarrassing experience of running upon a great new band that turns out to be a great old band that's been producing quality work for five years or more. Such is the case with Gorky's [...]

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Huon Songs For Lord Tortoise Animal World By: Eric G.
If you say the title of this Huon record really fast it sounds like Songs The Lord Taught Us, which is a classic Cramps’ album from 1980, but while Huon may be Cramps fans there is hardly any trace of it in these loose, [...]

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Magnolia Directed By Paul Thomas Anderson New Line Cinema By: Eric G.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s follow-up to Boogie Nights is an equally long but far more disturbing look at guilt, regret, embarrassment, and reconciliation. Anderson weaves together seemingly unrelated vignettes, but he manages cleverly to tie them all together. It feels like Robert Altman’s [...]

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Dynamic Syncopation Dynamism Ninja Tune By: Eric G.
Dynamic Syncopation is The Herbaliser’s producer Jonny Cuba and UK DJ The Loop Professor equipped with a vast record collection, a predilection for sophisticated, jazzy grooves and potent hip-hop stylings. The instrumentation fuses electronics along with a pastiche of organic beats, which are low and [...]

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Sally Timms Cowboy Sally’s Twilight Laments For Lost Buckaroos Bloodshot By: Robert H.
When an artist falling under the struggling rubric "alt.country" is good, it is usually because of a return to whiskey-glass songwriting and a rawness of presentation that escapes the Nashville production halo. Sally Timms tries another route: a combination of [...]

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The Talented Mr. Ripley Directed By Anthony Minghella Paramount By: Eric G.
With an Hitchcockian title sequence that immediately triggers feelings of trepidation and dread, Anthony Minghella is off to a good start with his follow up to The English Patient. The cinematography is predictably stunning with a lush 1950’s Italian setting as [...]

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Man On The Moon Directed By Milos Forman Universal By: Eric G.
Man On The Moon is not a great movie, but it’s not Jim Carrey’s fault. Carrey had his part down pat. It’s partly director Milos Forman’s fault for even attempting to make a biographical film about a man as puzzling [...]

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Cocteau Twins BBC Sessions Bella Union By: Eric G.
The Cocteau Twins carved an unique niche for itself for the better part of two decades, crafting textural dirges rich in both atmospherics and vocal histrionics. The robotic and detached percussion aside, this band made beautiful music with the strangest combination of heavily affected guitars, [...]

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Supergrass S/T Parlaphone By: Eric G.
This is classic British pop music on the same level as early Rolling Stones and even Abbey Road-era Beatles. "Moving" kicks off Supergrass' third album with a schizophrenic tone: the moody, string-laden intro slips effortlessly into the kind of funky rocker only Supergrass could pull off. Vocalist Gaz [...]

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Subdebs Interview Nine Questions With Olympia, Washington's Subdebs! K Recording Artists By: Eric G.
Drawer B: How did you hook up with your bandmates?
Subdebs: Well, Star and I met at one of her solo shows in Olympia. My newly acquired friend Stella Marrs introduced me to her, cause I was new in [...]

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Those Bastard Souls Debt And Departure V2 By: Robert H.
So there's a mixed bag of good news and bad, Grifters fans. First, some bad: word has it that the Grifters are, at least, temporarily, on hold, if not permanently disbanded. Dave Shouse evidently feels that his songwriting is going in a direction other [...]

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Andrea Parker Kiss My Arp Mo' Wax By: Eric G.
Kiss My Arp is an amazingly stylized and brilliantly crafted debut album by DJ and sometimes vocalist Andrea Parker. She began her career as a DJ back in 1993 and released her first single for Mo' Wax almost four years ago, entitled "Melodious Thunk." [...]

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Fracosos El Sexy Dyspepsidisc By: Eric G.
Fracasos is an upstart band from Evansville, Indiana with many influences but little direction. Any band that evolves out of something called ‘Fernspank’ is already off to a bad start. El Sexy is full of genre-hopping, slightly self-indulgent instrumental interludes, acoustic guitars that sound like they were [...]

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The Timeout Drawer Record Of Small Histories Some Odd Pilot By: Eric G.
Space rock has never sounded so good. The Timeout Drawer is a trio from Chicago that plays mostly instrumental, emotionally textured rock. The analogue synths are layered with affected guitar tones very much reminiscent of Robert Smith’s chiming style, particularly in [...]

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Pinehurst Kids Viewmaster 4 Alarm By: Eric G.
Having ‘kids’ in your band’s name is kind of a stigma these days in light of the whole emo/punk debacle (the Getup Kids, etc.), but the Pinehurst Kids really have nothing to do with that unfortunate genre, excepting the aforementioned name problem. Pinehurst Kids are a [...]

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Frederik Schikowski Einblick Ins Familienalbum Irritant By: Eric G.
Lo-fi electronic music seems like a contradiction in terms, but Frederik Schikowski has created an album’s worth of the catchiest and trashiest lo-fi electronic pop I’ve ever heard. The beats sputter, sounding primitive and deliberately overdriven, but I find myself bopping along. The tone is [...]

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