The Jezabels – The Brink (Independent)
About a year ago, at a drinks function at my workplace, a young buck who styled himself as an urbane inner city ladies man was steadily plying himself with complimentary refreshments and gilding his self-impression as master of the domain. I let my guard down and wound up in a circle with the young master, […]
Dirty Jeans – The Rise of Australian Alternative Rock (…from a non-Australian music critic)
Well, how bloody convenient! So here we were, musing about how Triple J has gripped the Aussie music industry so tightly that even writers are falling all over each other to sound exactly alike – when along comes this compilation. Fantastic! Now we have here a bona fide aural coffee table book – 25 tracks, […]
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Wig Out at Jagbags (Matador)
Hey, Mr. Malkmus. I don’t know if you read these reviews anymore – what with you being a cultural icon and thus guaranteed a decent chunk of moolah – but I’m Lee Adcock. You haven’t heard of me yet, and that’s OK – I’m a new, bumbling writer/critic and I tend to always screw up […]
Lonnie Holley – Just Before Music (Dust to Digital)
Detail, commentary, comedy, conversation. All over a single Casio pulse.
By all accounts, this should have been a review on Keeping a Record Of It, the LP that Casio-devotional-blues-journeyman Lonnie Holley released last year. However. I reckoned that many of you reader folk weren’t familiar with Lonnie’s earlier work – and neither was I, so I dug up last year’s Just Before Music, his debut. […]
THE ALTERNATIVE REVIEW | Haim – Days Are Gone (Columbia)
There’s been a lot of talk about Scott Creney’s review of the Haim album. So in the interests of fair play, here’s an alternative review.
Haim – Days Are Gone (Columbia)
Haim’s pleasure, limited as even its enthusiasts admit, is the empty pleasure of an endless series of twinkies eaten over the course of 45 minutes. Fine enough in the beginning, but eventually destined to sicken.
Nirvana’s In Utero, 20 years later
People are re-evaluating Nirvana again, it being the 20th anniversary of the Olympia WA group’s third and final album In Utero. Here’s my contribution.
Willis Earl Beal – Nobody Knows (XL)
Music to bury your parents to. Music to shake yourself to sleep to. Music to make a traffic jam seem poetic. Music to make you a better person. Music to make you the worst person you’ve ever been. Music to stalk children to. Music to save the world to.
Fuck Buttons – Slow Focus (ATP Recordings)
If 85% of an album is weak dishwater, then it’s a bad album. There’s better ways to spend your time and money.
Peace – In Love (Columbia)
I say fuck youth when it’s this old, fuck fans if they’re this fucking stupid, and fuck happiness if it means the smug assurance that the middling will triumph whilst the revolutionary and revelatory will be impoverished & obliterated
