Rachel HelmCatchiness can only hold your attention for so long, and even that gets stale before long on The Little Heroes’ second album, Thank You. Although it’s full of driving beats and semi-rhythmic guitar patterns, too much of it sounds like...
Travis Lee Wiggins has been described as prolific, and although it’s accurate, I’m not sure it does him justice. The newest release from his Chicago band Essex Chanel, Love is Proximity, is studio album number eight — not including...
Vee Hua 華婷婷It’s official: These Arms Are Snakes’ frontman Steve Snere is my favorite frontman. Simultaneously goofy and raw, Snere is the kind of guy you might think would run out of signature moves — he has so many, after all — but on...
Over six years after the Postal Service’s debut, the music produced by Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello is still influencing new jacks like Adam Young, who takes the stage name Owl City. Owl City’s been there, done that album, Ocean...
In a feat that must be applauded, Dean Woods’ new release, Ahhhmend, manages to create a sound that might simultaneously have come from a simpler, naive past and a distant and sophisticated future. These are beautiful songs that, in an...
Rarely has one adjective so adequately described a piece of music more than the word “moody” describes The Color Turning’s debut LP, Good Hands Bad Blood. If you are able to move pass the beginning track, “Slow as Passing...
Phil Elverum of ex-Microphone’s fame is one of those artists who has garnered enough legitimate respect throughout his music-making career that when he says something rather off the wall — such as how the decidedly not-black metal...
Because of really cheesy (re: terrible) nu-Warped bands like Millionaires and Brokencyde, I long for the days of earnest Midwestern emo. Yes, I wrote the dreaded “E” word, but let’s not get it twisted. Before it turned into the...