It is not too often that a band's entire discography can end up being compiled into a single, 36-minute album, but such is the case with The Loved. Originally a five song EP released 10 years ago, here it is reissued and expanded with five more tracks intended for a full album which never materialized. What remains is a disc of unpretentious pop-inspired alternative rock, which sadly points to what could have been.
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This collection of vinyl/outtakes from the Rhode Island garbage band might span almost ten years, but for the most part, their pedigree is irrelevant. They all sound as if they have come out of the same dirty, condemned back alley club with a rat problem and ugly people bareback fucking in the bathroom. Looking at the liner notes, that's not necessarily a metaphor but an accurate depiction. Strip away the old grease and dried jizz, however, and there's a solid set of songs amongst the filth.
If ever I wanted music to encapsulate raw pain and anguish in such agonising detail and with such empathy, then this has to be it. Arrowhead is familiar Prurient/Dominick Fernow territory of emotions stripped bare and the ugly underside of the human condition, all delineated through his use of tortured circuits and fried electronics.
Utilizing recordings made over the last decade to make their debut album, the Welsh trio cannot be called hasty. They can, however, be called a treat to the ears. Oscillating wildly between spacey pop and documentary, they have assembled an album that is not only a collection of wonderful songs but also give a bystander’s perspective on the strange creature that is Europe.
Both in- and outside Volcano the Bear, Daniel Padden has made some stunning music and his One Ensemble are the golden children in my eyes. Their jubilant and rapturous music is some of the most thrilling music currently available on a compact disc. Yet with this solo album, Padden takes the same spirit of his ensemble but strips it down to the bare essential (himself). With an occasional guest player, Padden has crafted an idiosyncratic, unassuming and fascinating album complete with hummable melodies and confounding noises.
Nurse With Wound's contributing pianist (Sylvie and Babs, Spiral Insana, A Sucked Orange, and a number of compilation and odd tracks) gave up recording as Sema by the late 1980s and continued on through the '90s under different guises and aliases to suit quite a different style of music he pursued. This is the first release in nearly 20 years under his own name and finds a return to the quiet and introspective simplicity that fans of the quiet piano era will easily adore.
Almost 23 years after his death, Robbie Basho's cosmic approach to steel-string guitar is the stuff of legend. On this 1980 live recording, Basho's exciting and perplexing playing is sometimes punctuated by his delightfully unfashionable and extraordinarily full-throttle singing.
The latest from Zagreb's instrumental rockers Seven That Spells is a marked improvement over their previous collaboration with Acid Mother Kawabata Makoto. While that album certainly wasn't bad, its main fault was that it sounded too much like any other Makoto project. Here, however, their energy and prowess are on full display.
On the surface, the second album from Poni Hoax seems to have it all: brooding synthesizers, punchy drums, a dispassionate yet forceful singer, and an icy attitude. While it contains several good songs and some decent hooks, it's not enough to override the album's overbearing mood or its sections of needless repetition.
Don't trust photographs because they're nowhere near as powerful as genuine memories. That may as well be Fleet Foxes motto for their debut record on Sub Pop. At least there's one band that believes their music should be more than the guitars, drums, and voices that compose it.
