Review: Graham Costello’s STRATA – “Obelisk”
It’s a calculated and unbelievably addictive kind of descent into madness. Obelisk — the (wait for it) BRILLIANT debut full-length from Scottish sextet Graham Costello’s STRATA, out Feb. 1 –…
Review: Hawk and Dove – “Our Childhood Heroes”
I wanted to start this review with the following: Our Childhood Heroes, the sophomore outing by Brooklyn collective Hawk and Dove, can best be summarized by its closing track. At…
Review: Perch – “No Step”
Call it math rock with more hooks than a tackle box. The new LP from the U.K. quartet Perch — No Step, self-released and out Jan. 12 — exhibits all…
Review: Mark Deutrom – “The Blue Bird”
If most of Mark Deutrom’s new LP — The Blue Bird, kicking off 2019 Friday via Seasons of Mist — is any indication, the titular bird is a blue of…
Review: Night Vapor – “1,000 Miles of Mud”
“Dirtminer,” and its inherent sense of grime and mire and dischord, is the template. The opening song on Night Vapor’s 1,000 Miles of Mud — out last week via Corpse…
Justin Vellucci’s Top Ten Records I Reviewed This Year — 2018 Edition
Well, here it is, Mr. December, yet another year, yet another year-ending list. And what more can be said? We want to be free. We want to be free to…
Review: Tenchio – “Bedroom Chaos of The Inner Noodle”
Manuel Tenchio, who often just goes by the nom-de-guerre Tenchio, is a Uruguayan teenage guitar whiz who plays a kind of mutant math-thrash with reckless abandon. And if his second…
LP Review: Calexico – “The Black Light: 20th Anniversary Edition”
I don’t know if I’m old but this didn’t seem that long ago. And only old people say that. It was 1999, maybe 2000, apparently. The venue was Maxwell’s, an…
Review: Christian Frederickson – “Islands of Light”
There’s this piece of ephemera from the days of the Rachel’s ensemble that sticks to the attic of my mind like so much setting rubber cement – let’s call them…
Review: Daughters – “You Won’t Get What You Want”
Daughters, never a band to play it understated, returns as a beast both transformed and reborn in the Rhode Island quartet’s first release since a pseudo “break-up” around 2009/2010 –…
Review: Will Oldham – “Songs of Love and Horror”
Songs of Love and Horror — a new LP, out alongside a tome of lyrics last week via Drag City, wherein the acclaimed singer-songwriter Will Oldham unfurls tender incantations of…
Review: Colin Mawson – “Death of the Ego”
It begins in isolation: a descending piano line, a star-twinkle gradually picking up speed as it traverses the lonely sky. The song – the title track to Colin Mawson’s Death…