Mar 31 2010

Look Mexico – To Bed To Battle

Category: Music In My Ears — dryvetyme @ 07:00

Look Mexico
To Bed To Battle
Suburban Home; 2010

Music critics and fans a like have spent the past several years looking for the next big band, the next big sound, and the next big thing that’s going to “save” rock-n-roll. I have several friends that regularly bemoan the takeover of the indie universe by groups like Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear, much less the ascension of flavors-of-the-month like “chillwave” and “glo-fi.” Their gripes are understandable – sometimes all you want to hear is a classic guitar-bass-and-drums setup banging out three chords and the truth, not some spaced-out jam, complete with electronic aides and annoying vocal manipulation.
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Mar 30 2010

Lighten Up – Absolutely Not

Category: Music In My Ears — dryvetyme @ 07:00

Lighten Up
Absolutely Not
Jump Start; 2010

My goal for this review is to write it in around seventeen minutes. I figured that, since the four men of Lighten Up are able to deliver the searing twelve-song record that is Absolutely Not in that length of time, I want to honor the music by talking about it with the same speed, urgency, and passion the band employs to create such classic East Coast hardcore punk. This album is a fine example of ferocious, unrelenting punk, complete with chugging guitars in their dirty, distorted fury, a pummeling rhythm section, and the throat-shredding vocals off Perry Shall.
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Mar 29 2010

Extra Life – Made Flesh

Category: Music In My Ears — dryvetyme @ 07:00

Extra Life
Made Flesh
LOAF; 2010

If I were to describe the jumble of sounds that criss-cross the whole of Made Flesh, the new record from avant-rock outfit Extra Life, as a Rubik’s Cube, I think that people would understand that metaphor. Much like one of those nefariously frustrating six-colored, six-sided polygons, the “solving” of this eight-song album requires intense amounts of patience, diligence, and musical intelligence that not everyone possesses. There are simply too many pieces and parts tussling with each other, none of which ever takes the lead so that the listener can find anything even remotely familiar to latch onto, much less match the necessary colors together to form even one complete side.
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Mar 26 2010

Wild Moccasins Tour Kick-Off Show

Category: H-Town Rock,Music In My Ears — dryvetyme @ 07:00

Attention Houston, TX!

Much to my delight, one of my favorite hometown indie-pop acts is heading out on tour next week, and there’s going to be a big tour kick-off show to celebrate!

That’s right – Wild Moccasins are looking to share its music with the rest of the country (something that more Houston bands should do), complete with locally celebrated punk-rock trio Something Fierce, and the spaced-out avant-pop of Ghormeh Sabzi.

The show is set for Thursday, April 1st, 2010 at Walter’s on Washington (4215 Washington Ave.). The doors are slated to open at 7:00pm, the music should start at 8:00pm, and a mere $6.00 is all it takes to gain admittance to this all-ages event.

The 1st 100 people who arrive will receive a FREE copy of Wild Moccasins’ 2009 EP Microscopic Metronomes and a free poster from the band’s upcoming 2010 full-length debut album Skin Collision Past.

Mar 25 2010

The Unthanks – Here’s The Tender Coming

Category: Music In My Ears — dryvetyme @ 07:00

The Unthanks
Here’s The Tender Coming
Rough Trade; 2010

Folk musicians tend to fall into two distinct camps when recording their songs: make things as simple as possible (usually a mere guitar and voice) or ramp up the amount of additional instruments to ponderous levels. With the former setup, it’s because the artist wants to imitate the format in which the songs were originally composed and/or to make the music much easier to take out onto the road. With the latter, it’s because the artist (or producer) is eager to mirror the volume of rock music and believes that there is a direct relationship between intensity and the number of participants playing on the record. Then again, if you’re Ryan Adams, you just make two different ten-song albums in the same year and hope that one of them is worth a damn.
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