By Eli Shively, General Manager A group of four friends that met during their time attending the Berklee College of Music in Boston, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Bat House have spent a lot of time honing their craft. Though they like to remain humble about their wealth of instrumental talent, their self-released,…
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Album Review: Bat House – Bat House
By Eli Shively, General Manager [Self-Released; 2017] Rating: 8.5/10 Key Tracks: “Yarn,” “Chemical X,” “Viridian City (Party)” In an age of immediacy, accessibility and prolificacy in the indie music world, being a band for upwards of two years without any recorded material seems a bit risky. However, up until they released the single “Patterns” last…
Album Review: Loose Tooth – Big Day
By Eli Shively, General Manager [Father/Daughter; 2017] Rating: 8/10 Key Tracks: “Garlic Soup,” “Roach Motel” Loud Rock has experienced somewhat of a renaissance in the 2010s, with everything from a so-called “shoegaze revival” to a wave of 90’s alt-rock nostalgia in DIY music circles seemingly happening all at once. However, most of what’s become of…
Album Review: Aimee Mann – Mental Illness
By Eli Shively, General Manager [SuperEgo; 2017] Rating: 7/10 Key Tracks: “Goose Snow Cone,” “Good for Me” At first glance, an album title like Mental Illness seems overly flashy and perhaps a little misguided. The term’s current status as a social and artistic buzzword may leave the impression that Aimee Mann is milking it for…
Album Review: Show Me the Body – CORPUS I
By Eli Shively, General Manager [Loma Vista; 2017] Rating: 8.5/10 Key Tracks: “Trash,” “In A Grave,” “Halogen” Show Me the Body’s new mixtape CORPUS I just about proves the collective intuition of their fans true: Not a single artist or band out there is doing what they’re doing, not even close. The logical follow-up to that…
Album Review: Thelma – Thelma
By Eli Shively, General Manager [Tiny Engines; 2017] Rating: 8.5/10 Key Tracks: “If You Let It,” “Peach” Thelma’s self-titled debut is a striking combination of depth and polish. At seven tracks and 30 minutes long, it feels equal parts carefully curated and ambitious, a highly personal journey that focuses just as much on engrossing the…
Album Review: Power Trip – Nightmare Logic
By Eli Shively, General Manager [Southern Lord; 2017] Rating: 8/10 Key Tracks: “Soul Sacrifice”, “If Not Us Then Who” It only takes a few minutes of familiarity with Power Trip’s second LP Nightmare Logic to recognize that the Dallas, Texas metalcore quintet has spent countless hours perfecting their craft. Formed in 2008, they’ve released two…
Album Review: Cloud Nothings – Life Without Sound
By Eli Shively, General Manager [Carpark; 2017] Rating: 7/10 Key Tracks: “Internal World,” “Modern Act” Cloud Nothings’ Dylan Baldi has never taken this long to make one album, and it shows. His career’s been defined up to this point with more loosely composed, abstract portraits of the artist — the brilliant hook-heavy noise of both…
Album Review: Code Orange – Forever
By Eli Shively, General Manager [Roadrunner; 2017] Rating: 7.5/10 Key Tracks: “Forever,” “Bleeding In The Blur” If Turnstile’s mastery of bouncy power chord grooves and neo-P.M.A. persona have made them the “good guys” of the current hardcore landscape, Pittsburgh’s Code Orange are its snarling, brash heel characters — many fans of the genre love to…
Album Review: Kevin Devine – Instigator
By Eli Shively, General Manager [Procrastinate!; 2016] Rating: 8.5/10 Key Tracks: “Freddie Gray Blues,” “Both Ways,” “I Was Alive Back Then” Kevin Devine is a songwriter’s songwriter. His greatest works don’t grab you by the eardrums right off the bat; they pull you slowly inward, the beckoning combination of voice and guitar executed as perfectly as…
Album Review: Dance Gavin Dance – Mothership
By Eli Shively, General Manager [Rise; 2016] Rating: 5/10 Key Tracks: “Philosopher King,” “Betrayed by the Game” “Post-hardcore” is pretty much the weirdest genre in all of music. On one hand, there’s bands like Fugazi, Bear vs. Shark and At the Drive-In, ones that earn unanimous praise from critics and casual listeners alike and are universally…
Album Review: Infinity Crush – warmth equation
By Eli Shively, General Manager [Joy Void; 2016] Rating: 6/10 Key Tracks: “drowning here with all my friends,” “flightless” warmth equation, the latest bedroom pop opus from Infinity Crush (a.k.a. Julia Brown’s Caroline White), can be labeled as “dreamy” to the extent that it basically feels like the sonic equivalent of being asleep. This won’t…
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