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Showing posts from April, 2009

Review: Gonzales - "Checkmate"

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Contrary to the undiscerning robots of Last.fm, Gonzales is not “a Canadian multi-talented musician known for his MC and electro albums (i.e. "The Entertainist" and "Presidential Suite") and his comical live shows, is able to play the piano, guitar, bass, drums and various brass instruments and [who] in the 1990s, was the leader of the alternative rock band Son before embarking on his solo career.” This Gonzales is a mildly Bronx-y punk-n-roll quartet from Italy. Checkmate is a fluid, ten-song, 30-minute blast of really fast rock and roll, southernized slightly (where the faint Bronx comparisons come in) but whipping by with almost a skatepunk propensity. Either Markey Moon or Mark Simon Hell (whoever is doing the majority of the guitar solos on this album) is ridiculously good and saves this album from the threat of mediocrity. Even though the Italian accents and awkwardly pronounced vocals tend to get in the way, the semi-distorted tone and production/mixing help

Review: Skavesa - "10 Years of Love and Hate"

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Adequate but average ska is one of the most difficult segments of music to assess and write about, I’ve found. By its shear makeup, a run-of-the-mill ska record will almost always be qualitatively better than its punk rock counterpart, but the leisurely pace and homogeneous structures of the former can make it just as shrug-worthy. Italy’s Skavesa` released their first album 10 years ago (hence title) and have moved from a ska-core approach to a more traditional two-tone sound since their inception. Hauling in big-name ska-sicians Vic Ruggiero of the Slackers and King Django of Skinnerbox, Stubborn All-Stars and Murphy’s Law among others to produce the album, Skavesa`’s 10 Years of Love and Hate is observably fueled towards the likeness of its engineers. Even with a smooth rocksteady sound and crystal-clean production, though, it lacks the x-factor that makes good ska great. The ESL lyrics unsurprisingly cannot capture what streetwise poets like Ruggiero add to their music, and the coc

Review: Druglords of the Avenues - "Sing Songs"

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God bless the Swingin’ Utters and all the ten-thousand branches of their musical family tree. The level of consistent quality not only ensures a worthwhile purchase, but effectively renders obsolete any excuses or attempts to justify illegal downloading “just to make sure it’s good.” Because whenever Swingin’ Utters-related music comes out, you know damn well it’s gonna be good. Long-time Utters frontman Johnny Bonnel also fronts Druglords of the Avenues, the Northern California ensemble that self-released their debut and nearly watched it sell out before Red Scare Industries came to the rescue, bringing Sing Songs wider distribution and the attention it deserves while preserving the enthralling artwork done by Bonnel himself. Backed by members of Knuckle Up, Moonshine, Butterface and Hot Heresy, Druglords of the Avenues represents the complete other side of the spectrum from Bonnel’s Filthy Thieving Bastards whereas Swingin’ Utters meets halfway between. That is to say that if there w

Review: World/Inferno Friendship Society live in Minneapolis

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I’ve been battling some of the worst sickness in memorable years for the last couple days. My throat started swelling unexpectedly at Wednesday night’s Twins game, and thrashing about with Fucked Up and openers Bring That Shit later in the evening probably didn’t help. By Thursday morning I was barely able to breathe, and as I’m typing this it hasn’t gotten a whole lot better. But even though I felt like crap, I decided there was no way I could miss World/Inferno Friendship Society. I showed up right at 10:00 because I hadn’t pre-ordered tickets and wanted to get there before it sold out as I was sure it would. Well, it turns out I was wrong. While there was a decent amount on the dancefloor, the Triple Rock was only about half-full. WTF, people? World/Inferno Friendship Society on a Saturday night in Spring…what more could you ask for? So getting there early, I sat and read The Onion for awhile before two girls and a guy took the stage and started screeching out some toe-tapping pop-p

Review: The Stooges - "The Weirdness"

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It’s possible to sum up the release of 2007’s The Weirdness, the first proper studio full-length by the Stooges in 34 years, in one word, one sentence, one bewildered query: Why!? Why, after a celebrated solo career and solidified slot in the rock ‘n’ roll record books, would Iggy and the Asheton brothers deem it warranted to reunite and record the songs written for this album? To be fair, Iggy Pop has never been a strong lyricist. It was more the stage-diving and peanut butter-smearing that made Iggy such a charismatic frontman than any stratum of stirring articulation. Sure, lyrics to songs like “Real Cool Time” and “I Need Somebody” were raw and clumsy, but so was the band and the music they were developing. But when a 59-year-old Pop is writing songs more juvenile than his theme song for “Space Goofs,” the results are much less suitable. There’s so much that’s wrong with this album, it’s straining to recall all of its built-in potential. For one, the return of Ron and Scott Asheton

Review: Holding on to Sound - "Songs of Freedom"

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By this point there’s little room for contention: Orgcore is an established and distinct subgenre under the punk umbrella. Its gruff, beardy likeness has witnessed adherents swell in popularity as new acts derived from the style’s pioneers pop up every week. And as a sovereign species, it is allowed to merge and cross-pollinate, fusing with other genres and charting new territory as a result. Orgcore: meet ska. Of course, I’m not talking about any kind of brassy, third-wave ensemble, nor am I claiming it’s the first time such a union has come together. Against Me! tapped the upstroke for “Jamaican Me Crazy” (or “Scream It Until You’re Coughing Up Blood,” depending on which part of the jewel case you believe) and American Steel has employed some skankable rhythms for songs like “Got a Backbeat” and “Shrapnel.” Cobra Skulls have embraced the two styles to an even greater extent with a handful of tunes like “Charming the Cobra,” “Cobra Skulls in D Minor” and “I Want Bigger Cobra Skulls.”