Demob Happy

Dirty Projectors -Bitte Orca 8/10 FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT Dirty Projectors are a band so singularly unconventional that I wondered how they had managed to gain so much popular attention – although their recent David Byre collaboration (the excellent ‘Knotty Pine’, from Red Hot’s much admired ‘Dark Was the Night‘ compilation) [...]

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Jackson Toth waves his Wooden Wand goodbye? 8/10 FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT: Previously leader of the New York-based experimental jazz-folk collective Wooden Wand & the Vanishing Voice, James Jackson Toth’s solo debut is a lush take on alt-country informed by blues, soul and, occasionally, punk. Whereas Wooden Hand … was very [...]

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Kentucky fried pysch-country 8.5/10 Over four albums My Morning Jacket have fashioned a sound that embraces widescreen emotionalism with rootsy Americana, pyschedelia and alt-country. ‘Z‘ sees My Morning Jacket broaden their influences while retaining the unifying use of reverb that makes all the songs sound unmistakably them now matter how far they stray from the [...]

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Timeless classic 9/10 Nixon was the record that got me into alt-country, even if it was the Lambchop album that saw the band off on a tangent too far for some fans of the scene. A highly unlikely marriage of Curtis Mayfield-type soul and pedal-steel country twang, it is an album of authentic and timeless [...]

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Geek chic 7/10 If like I did you heard ‘Coming On Strong‘ after their second, break-through album ‘The Warning‘, you might be wondering where the big tunes are. There is nothing as stand-out here as 2006′s stunning double-wammy of singles ‘Boy From School’ and ‘Over and Over’. Nevertheless, ‘Coming on Strong‘ sets the template for [...]

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Beguiling second album 8/10 Not being familar with her first solo effort or previous (pre-Broken Social Scene) encarnations in the Canadian punk scene and beyond, it was something of a surprise to come across this album. Such is the massive (frequently brilliant) overloading of Broken Social Scene’s musical pallette that Feist’s vocals are often buried [...]

Feist - Sealion Woman [ 3:40 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Radio transmission 7/10 TV on the Radio aren’t as an immediate band to get into as some reviews might have you believe. I loved their first EP Young Liars but found their debut LP ‘Desperate Youth Blood Thirsty Babes‘ wearyingly oppressive and turgid and two-starred it in an unpopular Amazon review. I have given Return [...]

tvontheradio - wolflikeme [ 4:39 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Gnarly debut 7/10 Much of the reviews for St Elsewhere evaulate all the tracks in relation to its mindblowing single ‘Crazy’. While it is probably pertinent to mention that there are no other tracks that reach the sublime level of that song, it may also pertinent to say that Crazy is one of the best [...]

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