Apr 19, 2012 Music Web Exclusive

During the 1970s, Philadelphia International Records released some of the best pop music of the last century, and Golden Gate Groove documents the night in 1973 when a handful of Philadelphia International Records’ best and brightest, including The O’Jays and Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, performed for a mainly white, and somewhat skeptical, convention of CBS record execs. 

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Apr 18, 2012 Music Web Exclusive

In this semi-baffling release, the silk-tongued Sufjan Stevens has collaborated with Chicago hip-hop artist Serengeti and electronic composer Son Lux for four tracks of oddball weirdness. Beak & Claw is largely a showcase for Serengeti's ambling, free-association raps, here set to glitchy electro pop, with mostly silly lyrics. More

Apr 17, 2012 Music Web Exclusive

Roger McGough and Mike McGear were both members of the music, poetry and comedy troupe The Scaffold, which had a short string of hits in the late 1960s and early 1970s. “McGear” was actually Mike McCartney, little brother of the Beatle Paul, making this album a semi-obscure piece of Beatles ephemera, with guests including Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix, Graham Nash, and John Mayall. More

Apr 17, 2012 Music Web Exclusive

The timeless quality always inherent in M. Ward's music abounds here on the songwriter's seventh solo album, and rather than a wasteland, this feels more like slices of a dreamscape. Reflective, calculated, and ultimately seductive, A Wasteland Companion drives one's senses through a quiet maelstrom of compressed energy. More

Apr 16, 2012 Music Web Exclusive

Danish outfit Choir of Young Believers' second LP mines breezy folk, synth pop, progressive narratives, and electronic experimentation for inspiration, somehow wrapping it all tightly up in a streamlined package that threatens to spill out from its modest trappings. More

Apr 13, 2012 Music Issue #40 - In the Studio 2012 - Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, and Twin Shadow

"Hey Jane" opens Sweet Heart Sweet Light, Spiritualized's seventh full-length album and the first since 2008's Songs in A&E. Nodding slyly to The Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane," the song finds frontman Jason Pierce wondering, like a mantra, "Hey Jane, when you gonna die?"—one of numerous allusions to mortality throughout Sweet Heart Sweet Light. More

Apr 09, 2012 Music Issue #40 - In the Studio 2012 - Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, and Twin Shadow

It's tempting to compare Zambri to Tegan and Sara. Both bands feature siblings singing about love, loss, and the madness found in between. Cristi Jo and Jessica Zambri's vocal performance on "ICBYS" even echoes the Quin sisters' indignant rasp. More

Apr 06, 2012 Music Issue #40 - In the Studio 2012 - Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, and Twin Shadow

Australia's feedtime seemed as averse to fame as they were to capital letters. The band's original lineup decided to hang it up in 1989 rather than embark on an overseas tour, leaving behind four internationally acclaimed full-lengths after their roughly decade-long existence. More

Apr 05, 2012 Music Issue #40 - In the Studio 2012 - Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, and Twin Shadow

Nobody is going to be angry at California's RACES. They make sweet, atmospheric folk-rock with a psychedelic quaver; singer Wade Ryff has an easy, soulful rasp; and their Frenchkiss debut full-length Year of the Witch is nicely full-bodied. More