album reviews
Eric Church
The Outsiders EMI Nashville
Eric Church branded himself a country-music outlaw of consequence on 2011's platinum-selling Chief, with the singles "Springsteen" (a Bruce-induced letter to an ex) and "Homeboy" (a tale of hip-hop attitude gone rural), plus riffs that echoed Zeppelin and the Stones as much as Buck Owens. On his fourth studio album, he could have copied the formula, or dialed it back to court uptight country-radio programmers. Instead, the North Carolina singer-songwriter made a record that's weirde... | More »
Temples
Sun Structures Fat Possum
"I wrote a song for thee," frontman James Edward Bagshaw offers on this U.K. band's debut. As his archaic address implies, Temples play mid-Sixties psych rock at its most archly transporting. Every swirling fuzz tone, cathedral-organ bleat and Harrisonian Rickenbacker run is perfectly placed. There are also shambling echoes of Britain's Nineties "baggydelic" scene. What's lacking are the fun and wit of a great Summer of Love 45. When Bagshaw sings, "Past life brings the future ... | More »
Band of Horses
Acoustic at the Ryman Brown
Band of Horses have always had a folkie core, but it's usually been hidden beneath layers of Nineties guitar noise on their four studio albums. Acoustic at the Ryman, recorded at the historic Nashville venue over two nights last April, replaces the fuzz with piano balladry and complex multipart harmonies. Frontman Ben Bridwell's vocals are perfectly suited to the change-up, as are most of the songs here. Band of Horses' 2006 breakout single, "The Funeral," fares the poorest &nd...; | More »
Hurray for the Riff Raff
Small Town Heroes ATO
This Crescent City crew's breakthrough LP could be called Inside Alynda Lee Segarra. Like the Coen brothers' Llewyn Davis, the Bronx-bred Segarra is a troubadour steeped in tradition and shivering on the road – see "Crash on the Highway," a boozy shuffle that finds her homesick in a German traffic jam en route to a gig. Her folk-roots music feels both ancient and modern, from the title track's drug-damaged characters to the gunslinging young thugs in "St. Roch Blues" and ... | More »
Cibo Matto
Hotel Valentine Chimera
Few bands embodied the Nineties' hey-whatever boho freedom like Cibo Matto: two Japanese women living large on the Lower East Side, mixing jazz, dub and lounge pop with a post-Beasties hip-hop swizzle. Their bright sound is a touch moodier on their first album in 15 years, as Miho Hatori drops doleful stoner whimsy over keyboardist-producer Yuka Honda's languid boom-bap. Members of Wilco and Atoms for Peace highlight an ace crew of backing musicians on what turns out to be a concept... | More »
Robert Ellis
The Lights From the Chemical Plant New West
You can't take the country out of the boy – just listen to Robert Ellis' honeyed twang – but the boy can take the country out of his songs. The young Texas songwriter, who has proved his honky-tonk chops onstage, takes this opportunity to offer 11 expansive folk-pop songs that are closer in weary spirit to Paul Simon – including a soulful, pedal-steel-sweetened cover of "Still Crazy After All These Years." Elsewhere, "Chemical Plant" casts a harshly beautiful visua... | More »
Tinariwen
Emmaar Anti-
Transplant a group of veteran Saharan guitar slingers to a different desert (SoCal's Mojave, specifically the indie depot of Joshua Tree) and add some American guests – rock guitarists Josh Klinghoffer and Matt Sweeney, poet-MC Saul Williams and more. What do you get? Impressively, an undiluted Tinariwen LP that's all circular Afro-Berber riffs, hypnotic hand claps, sun, sky and sand. Unlike the excellent, largely acoustic 2011 set Tassili, the guitars here are mainly electrif... | More »
Sun Kil Moon
Benji Caldo Verde
Folk singer Mark Kozelek's remarkable sixth album as Sun Kil Moon feels less like a collection of songs than a series of eulogies delivered in real time. "Carissa was 35/You don't just raise two kids and take out your trash and die," he protests – then admits he didn't know Carissa all that well, anyway. It's a casually devastating line on an album filled with them. Later, thoughts on lost love and attempted suicide detour to Panera Bread, and a midnight show of Led ... | More »
Jennifer Nettles
That Girl Mercury Nashville
It's a daunting task to separate Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles from the bells and whistles of her platinum-selling pop-country band – the Journey-centric intros, the moist beatboxing, the reggae patois, the AutoTune, the Panic! at the Honky Tonk power-emo and everything else heard on their 2010 smash Incredible Machine – but producer Rick Rubin is the man to do it. Who better than the famed "reducer" who successfully stripped layers of studio gloss from country heroe... | More »
Broken Bells
After the Disco Columbia
Broken Bells are a collaboration between two guys who sit at very different tables in the music-biz lunchroom. Danger Mouse is a hip-hop-savant-turned-L.A.-superproducer (his credits include Gnarls Barkley, the Black Keys and the next U2 record); James Mercer of the Shins is a singer-songwriter who lives in Portland, Oregon (his credits include a raft of finely wrought indie-pop records, a wife and kids, and a well-kept beard). The idea of these two working together is like an endearing mumbl... | More »
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