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Reviews: Rock / Indie

 
 

Review: Liars Sisterworld
Label: Mute

Maybe it's the two members with art-school backgrounds, but Liars have a knack for taking clichés to sublime places. Considering that the distance between their first album—the apex of dance-punk that might also be a joke at its expense—and the post-grunge miniature songcraft of 2007's Liars seems smaller than some would have you believe, it makes sense that Sisterworld sounds like more of a conceptual wager than a stylistic one. Read more » 

Review: White Hills White Hills
Label: Thrill Jockey

White Hills' last album, Heads on Fire, flared and throbbed in the peak-era Hawkwind/Comets on Fire vein of robust space rock that appeals both to stoners and acid acolytes. However, the New York-based group considers this self-titled album, its fourth overall, to be a new phase in its evolution. "Dead," though, starts the disc with more of that roiling, majestic rock—no real departure, even with Oneida's Kid Millions playing drums. Read more » 

Review: Josiah Wolf Jet Lag
Label: Anticon

Siblings hate being compared to one another, but it's impossible to listen to Josiah Wolf's debut effort without thinking of Yoni Wolf, WHY?'s master wordsmith and Josiah's brother/band mate. Perhaps if Josiah's work stood apart from Yoni's in any real, audible way, we could ignore the fact that the two are, in fact, related to one another. Read more » 

Review: Xiu Xiu Dear God, I Hate Myself
Label: Kill Rock Stars

For those reading the title of Xiu Xiu's latest record and wondering, "They're kidding, right?" the answer is: probably. Because despite packing the group's last six albums with some of the most serious heart-on-sleeve lyrics ever heard in indie rock, frontman Jamie Stewart actually has quite a sense of humor—and it seems like it's finally beginning to surface. At the very least, Dear God, I Hate Myself marks a new level of maturity and self-awareness for the band. Read more » 

Review: Yeasayer Odd Blood
Label: Secretly Canadian

Yeasayer's 2007 debut, All Hour Cymbals, was the closest thing indie rock had come to world music since the Talking Heads released Fear of Music 20 years ago—a jittery blend of religious folk, West African polyrhythms, and synthesized experimentation. With Odd Blood, the Brooklyn trio has left behind its most obvious ethnic influences—and its environmental anxiety—for a tighter, more polished sound. Gone, too, is much of their debut's organic instrumentation. Read more » 

Review: Dinowalrus %
Label: Kanine

In comparison to the noisy rock sounds propagated by contemporaries such as HEALTH, Ganglians, and Liars, Dinowalrus is a far more unhinged outfit whose heavily reverberated atmospheres, herky-jerky basslines, and warped soundscapes bring to mind earlier days of post-punk. Read more » 

Review: Clipd Beaks To Realize
Label: Lovepump United

Calling an album "mature" is often a death knell for creativity and excitement, but in the case of To Realize, it's good thing. Clipd Beaks have never been tied to traditional songwriting—their 2006 Preyers EP and 2007 full-length, Hoarse Lords, were both cacophonous collections of spastic yelps and unruly bursts of noise—but To Realize is downright epic. Read more » 

Review: Kap Bambino Blacklist
Label: Because

Although Kap Bambino's reputation as a shit-hot live act is well established, Blacklist, the Bordeaux duo's third album, doesn't quite capture the group's on-stage magic. Read more » 

Review: Patrick Cowley and Jorge Socarras Catholic

Pick
Label: Macro

A few years ago, some San Francisco DJs and music enthusiasts happened upon a stack of unreleased tape reels featuring collaborations between gay disco icon Patrick Cowley and multi-instrumentalist Jorge Socarras. Shockingly, Catholic was not a Hi-NRG disco album along the lines of Cowley's production for Sylvester, but a multi-genre concept work that hardly contains any typical disco elements. Read more » 

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