Greg HealeyA good way to see if a label’s music matches your tastes is to check out a sampler they’ve released, and 23 Seconds’ A Shortcut Past The Fear compilation album is certainly worth a click. Available from the label website as a free...
Into It. Over It’s mastermind, Evan Thomas Weiss, is a member of Damiera and played in Up Up Down Down, a band that I consider one of the most underrated power-pop bands of all time. With that in mind, I expected some good songs, but was a bit...
If Aim And Ignite, the debut album by fun., was a character in a play, it would be the type of person that exaggerates every emotion. When that person is sad, he/she is really down in the dumps. When the person is happy, he/she skips around and does...
The instrumental, post-rock landscape is a bit crowded as of late. But in just three albums, the Chicago/Seattle trio Russian Circles have cemented themselves at the top, and this fact is readily apparent in their fantastic new album, Geneva...
Holy crap, this is lo-fi! The self-titled release from the trio Okie Dokie sounds like it was recorded in a human-sized garbage disposal unit. Somehow, that description is doing the sound quality a favor as well. This EP is a short-as-hell blast of...
Sure, Canada gave the world Broken Social Scene, but analogously speaking, Canada may be to the crowd of Crystal Castles fans what the last decade of Sub Pop releases is to modern hipsterdom. Although both seemed to harbor the potential to redefine...
Madison, Wisconsin’s Zebras play a peppy brand of chops-heavy sci-fi/dance punk, which I found myself enjoying thoroughly but ultimately not really connecting with entirely. There are some good ideas going on here, mainly in the form of...
This is the second Arrington de Dionyso disc I’ve been given to review for Redefine, and fortunately for me, the quality seems to be improving. Whereas 2008’s I See Beyond The Black Sun was intriguingly odd, I also found its endlessly...