Category: Music Reviews
Not An Airplane: It Could Just Be This Place(or time) Review
Reviewing music can be a tedious job. To create one, you have to take into account your interpretation of what the artist hoped to accomplish and meld it with how well you believe he or she accomplished this end, while also discussing how you feel about said hopeful interpretation accomplishment and what it means to accomplish such an interpretation… thusly. That was so heavy and confusing my brain exploded. But that is the motion my mind went into when our editor emailed me the latest by Not an Airplane, “It Could Just Be This Place”.
Review of Hugh Laurie’s “Let Them Talk”
This is what happens when you give every kid in the soccer league a trophy. This is what happens when you hold up movie and television stars as idols. They start making shitty music. I want to blame Gwyneth Paltrow for this trend, but its dark roots go much deeper. Remember Don Johnson? Remember Eddie Murphy? We have a long and shameful history of first convincing people that they can act, and then allowing them to believe they can sing.
Shared Progress: A Review of “Late Bloomer” by The Northstar Session
The Inept Owl has been lucky enough to have a few artists in multiple fields come back again and again with new albums, ideas, and visions. It has the feel of a family reunion, as we see each other grow up and grow out each time we get together for a brief moment in the year. Such is the case with The Northstar Session as I review their latest album, “Late Bloomer”.
Performance, Feedback, Revision: Rap Artist Baba Brinkman Hits NYC
Rap as an art form has continually evolved. From its tribal, beat-based story-telling syncopation around a fire to its modern, beat-based story-telling syncopation in 50,000 capacity sports arenas, rap has been in constant flux in how the form has been portrayed, enacted, and interpreted. The same can be said for modern biological evolution. So it is no surprise that Canadian rapper Baba Brinkman would take both of these linear ideas of evolution, and evolve them from performance, feedback, and revision, into a new album, The Rap Guide to Evolution: Revised, and then bring it to New York City as a public performance.
Review of Christian St. Croix’s “Rebel Yells (And Other Tales)
You think you know the blues? Hold up there, Hipster Hank. Put down your PBR and listen for a minute. This isn’t your super-rare bootleg 45 of Etta James playing live in some smoky dive in New Orleans. This isn’t John Lee Hooker, growling his way through another “woman done me wrong” song. And this definitely isn’t some long-haired white boy who just shreds his way through a 12-bar blues chord progression. Meet Christian St. Croix… a self-described “un-closeted new-roots blues singer into tattoos, street art and slasher flicks.”
Review of TV on the Radio’s “Nine Types of Light”
On April 20th, I got an email notification whose subject line read: “The Editor wants to share ‘TV on the Radio’ with you.” Do me a favor: go to Wikipedia, look up “TV on the Radio,” then see if you can find a reference to April 20th. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Yep. That guy sent me an album to crack jokes about on the day the band’s bassist died of cancer.
Review of Deftones: Diamond Eyes
To be fair, I knew fuck-all about the Deftones before I hear their latest album, Diamond Eyes. I thought, based on the name, that they were some sort of jazzy, neo-swing band of some sort. It turns out they are actually a rock band.
Review of Neon Dynamite’s Eponymous Album
I have a Jimi Hendrix CD, but Wesley Snipes informed me years ago that I can’t hear Jimi. I have a couple BB King CDs, but the closest I’ve been to the blues is watching Jake and Elwood tear through Chicago in a used cop car. (Actually, that’s not true. The closest I’ve been to the blues is watching Blues Brothers 2000—THAT hunk of dog crap will give you the blues.) So anyway, I have no idea what to do with Neon Dynamite’s 5-track, self-titled release.
Review of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream”
Finally, a female musician we can be proud of.
Katy Perry, America’s new model for demure self-respect, has released her sophomore effort, “Teenage Dream.” In it, we find the sounds and messages that we, as a nation, have been longing for since the turn of the century.
Review of “The Five Ghosts” by Stars
I’m told that Stars is a band from Montreal, and that “The Five Ghosts” is their fifth album or whatever. But, seriously… Degrassi? REALLY? This is the source of the music I’m reviewing? Did the latest volume of “Now That’s What I Call Disney!” not come out yet?
All mocking aside (Degrassi? DEGRASSI?), it’s an interesting album. Imagine if Joshua Radin and Ingrid Michaelson decided to make an album together, but decided that today’s music didn’t work for them. Pretend that they built a time machine—but one that could travel into the sitcom world—and went back to the Friends episode where Ross played his weird-ass electronic keyboard stuff. (Yes, I believe that was the name of the episode: “The One Where Ross Played His Weird-Ass Electronic Keyboard Stuff.” Seriously. DEGRASSI.)
