Comment on any CD Review in the April Reader's Respo™ Make sure you title your comment so we know which review you're talking about. You can also discuss local music 24/7 at The Noise Board THE CELLO CHIX Under the Covers 10-song CD This is a female trio, two cellists, Rebecca Thornblade and Susanna Porte, and drummer Nancy Delaney, who play instrumental versions of popular covers. It’s their superior musicianship makes this basic idea so listenable. While their live performance … Read More >>
Category Archives: CD Reviews
Comment on any CD Review in the March Reader's Respo™ Make sure you title your comment so we know which review you're talking about. You can also discuss local music 24/7 at The Noise Board NEPTUNE Radium/Table of the Elements Gong Lake 10-song CD “Forty-pound guitars assembled entirely from scrap metal” (and the like). So sayeth the presskit, and the wary are to be forgiven for thinking that this has got to be too gimmicky to be good. The wary … Read More >>
Comment on any CD Review in February's Reader's Respo™ Make sure you title your comment so we know which review you're talking about. You can also discuss local music 24/7 at The Noise Board THE DOOM BUGGIES The Doom Buggies 13-song CD Genre-wise, call this psycho-delic: the mutant offspring of "20 Flight Rock," The Purple Gang, and Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Throughout the '60s it may have clawed out our hearts via any number of moronic garage bashers as collected on … Read More >>
A.K.A.C.O.D. Happiness 12-song CD If ya didn’t know, these folks were friends and fans (and in one case, a member) of Morphine. If you miss hearing new music from them, this’ll fix it. I like both, but you know what they say: one person’s influence is another’s plagiarism. Detractors will call it flat-out robbery or worse, and they have their point. The approach is identical, right down to the moaning baritone sax and two-string slide bass, and the same adjectives … Read More >>
FISHEYE BROTHERS Fisheye Records 8-song preview There are three songs on this latest Willie Alexander project that defy ready description: The closing track, “Cruisin Boise,” is best: it’s a classic, like “White Light/White Heat” channeled through “Rock-a-Hula Baby”—yet another hypnosonic masterpiece from a local legend who has already given us so many. “Me and My Doppelganger” is another nonesuch: a combination of incantatory talking blues fronting an abstracted but discernable melody. The entertaining and easygoing “Barbara Reid” is … Read More >>
MY OWN WORST ENEMY Pristine Indigo Records Total Action 12 song-CD This is a very ambitious and extremely busy production replete with arrangements slopping over with cowbells, tambourines, glockenspiel, and Sue and Steve’s inimitable vocalizing; it almost sounds like the band barricaded itself inside of a 32-track studio, held Pete Weiss at gunpoint, and ordered him to go apeshit. Ahem. Anyway, this collection puts me in mind of all those great, underrated all-American garage-punk bands of the 1960s like The … Read More >>
THE ATLANTICS Something Hot Communications Live 13-song CD Nostalgia is what gets in the way. I don’t care that the band recorded this on March 25, 1979 on the eve of the national tour that was to make their reputation, nor need I mention that ABC Records dropped the ball forthwith. But The Atlantics were most likely never destined to be anything like The Cars, churning out their patented brand of deracinated New Wave kitsch; The Atlantics, bless their souls, … Read More >>
THE CHANDLER TRAVIS PHILHARMONIC Sonic Trout Tarnation and Alastair Sim 48-song CD I’m thinking life’s too short to listen to shitty music by artsy poseurs, hedonistic-slash-politically-aware “heavy” rockers, ham-fisted indie wankers, retro panderers, or brain-dead goofs in psychedelic clown suits. So I’d still much rather listen to “Surfin Bird” (or, for that matter, “Eje Ka Jo”) than, um, “Stairway to Heaven.” Good news for those who agree: “Wireless” has finally made it onto a studio album, as track six. Tune-wise, … Read More >>