pitchforkd

    • Antipop Vs. Matthew Shipp : Antipop Consortium  7.2
    • Matthew Shipp hasn't reached his teeth-baring potential. Yes, he's the greatest pianist of the modern age, blending diverse atonal qualities with an unequivocal spryness and an effortless range of emotion, and all those other things that come with being a brilliant player. (Free cocktails?) But when you compare the sentiment in a record like Nu Bop to that of most 20th Century composers with a similar vision, Shipp's stuff just doesn't hang on the low end of the friction enou... [ full review ]
    • Open Season : British Sea Power  7.8
    • If the 4/4 backbeats, swirling clouds of guitar sparkling with recessed synthesizers, and bright major-key leads of Open Season's first three tracks aren't proof enough, "Like a Honeycomb" seals it: British Sea Power have followed a clamorous post-punk debut with an album of unexpectedly gentle new-wave guitar pop that touches on, to name a few, early Cure, the Smiths, Echo and the Bunnymen, David Bowie, the Psychedelic Furs, and, most blatantly, Bossanova-era Pixies. ... [ full review ]
    • The Last Live Recording : John Coltrane  10.0
    • "He not busy being born is busy dying." - Bob Dylan, "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" "Live flesh and coursing blood, hearts, brains, souls spluttering fire!" -LeRoi Jones, "Black Art" April 23rd, 1967. John Coltrane appears for his penultimate public performance before a crowd at Babatunde Olatunji's Center for African Culture in New York City. Three months later, liver cancer would claim his life. He would play once more in front of a live crowd, ... [ full review ]
    • Big Apple Rappin' : Various Artists  7.0
    • In his 2005 book of photography, A Time Before Crack, Jamel Shabazz collected images from New York City during the embryonic days of hip-hop, pre-heated-coke-explosion. It's a page-turner of borough teens in tight jeans, shells, Clydes, and Cazals, rocking boomboxes and beltbuckle nameplates. Not much has changed then, other than pervasive crack-rhetoric in raps and, of course, all the crack, which itself cuts trends, shunts history, and supplies the nostalgic weight to back-in-the-day comps... [ full review ]
    • Showbiz : Muse  6.7
    • The majority of young bands are unsure of what they truly want their band to be, aside from famous. This would explain the glittering rayon shirts, the frosted tips lacquered with Dep, and the I- stuck- my- chin- in- a- bowl- of- graphite- powder goatees. At least Muse also know they want to be Radiohead, which would explain the enlisting of producer John Leckie from The Bends and Matthew Bellamy's falsetto- laden yelps, which sound so much like Thom Yorke they could pass... [ full review ]
    • Let's Get Serious EP : Panthers  7.9
    • In 1984's The Friday Book, writer John Barth offers a salvo about epigraphs, calling the bits of quoted material "hokey... one more bit of window-dressing before we get to the goods." I disagree. But then, I've always tended towards indulgence, and I like it when authors (or bands or artists) layer a bunch of other people's words atop their own text, offering various paths to their own creation. Thankfully, the Panthers are similarly unafraid of affixing disparate textual voices to their w... [ full review ]
    • Promotional Copy : Reggie and the Full Effect  5.5
    • Given two pieces of information, you can probably figure out exactly what Promotional Copy sounds like. Fact 1: Reggie and the Full Effect is fronted by Get Up Kids keyboardist James Dewees. Fact 2: Promotional Copy includes songs titled "From Me 2 U," "Megan 2K," and "Thanx for Stayin'." So if you're thinking synth-driven, sugar-coated pop with heavily emo-inflected lyrics, you're right on target. Promotional Copy is a perky, peppy blast of synth-pop saccharine that wil... [ full review ]
    • Waves : Ride  7.7
    • You can count the great shoegaze bands on one hand, because most of those blurry, twirling romantics were terrible in concert. Even compared to their most talented contemporaries-- My Bloody Valentine, Pale Saints, Swervedriver and Chapterhouse at the start-- Ride were far and away the most exciting live act the genre produced. Their major radio broadcasts-- that first, promise-fulfilling Peel Session, the Town and Country Club gig in 1991 and a defining set at the 1992 Rea... [ full review ]
    • We're Solids : 764-HERO  8.2
    • An interesting side effect of the growth of the Northwest independent music scene is the increase in the number of "power duos," two- person bands like The Spinanes and godheadSilo, that take the concept of a "stripped- down sound" one step further. In a way, minimizing personnel is actually keeping in step with the less- is- more aesthetic that's the oft- forgotten basis of pop music. Certainly, that's the case with 764-HERO; singer/ guitarist John Atkins used to be ... [ full review ]
    • Tall Dark Hill : Wolfie  2.1
    • After Flickerstick pulled a thrilling, narrow victory for the title of VH1's "Bands on the Run" series, the dudes, as they would tend to call themselves, ignited their van and set off to conquer the world through a set of gigs at overpriced theme bars and restaurants. The highlight of the Planet Hollywood show in Cleveland was certainly the all-you-can-eat bin of Bruce Willis's Cap'n Crunch-breaded chicken fingers. Though, another outstanding moment came when one of... [ full review ]