GoatmeatMF

but that Mariah Carey cover sounds....essential.

Nice review. it seems like it's heded to more than a 7, but...scores. meh.

I guess Sam Amidon is one of my favourite artists, I've been listening to him pretty consistently since Samamidon. Great artist.

but they don't seem to have quite the same thing going for them in terms of audience. I don't really see why - maybe their albums aren't really that different to each other, so they're not expanding their audience that much with each one. They're not as overtly 'experimental'? Not as bombastic? I'd say Nothing Ever Happened is their Paranoid Android though, but it;s a lot sleeker. No big jump into electronics or other wildly polarising musical style to give them big newsworthy media attention. Dunno.

I wanted to hear them rev it up instead of going even more glacial on the last album. I loved Halcyon Digest but I still wanted something with more fire. I guess this could be it.

'insanely catchy'?

after The Knife, that seems to be totally afraid of anything slightly interesting. It's really weird. There's nothing too challenging on The Knife album and this Phoenix album is straight up pop music. I don't understand why you feel Bankrupt is so counter-intuitive to existing pop tropes and structures. Both The Knife and this album were what I was expecting. I think this kind of writing has an air of elitism about it, giving a sense of the writer holding down the capacity of the readers to comprehend an album which only this writer is capable of understanding.

I appreciate that's not exactly how you've written it, but this album is really not that far out incomprehendable or recalictrant. It's pop music in form and structure. Inventive, but not indecipherable by any means - and by design it could never be. No need to overcomplicate it, and more importantly overintellectualise it in a way that condescends to the reader/listener.

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if you try and scare people away from certain music by making it out to be this cryptic sequence of events which most people would be incogniscant to. That's the old indier-than-thou mentality creeping in there. It's a pretence which ultimately does the music you are trying to advocate a disservice.

This might seem a bit harsh - not aimed at you personally Krystina, but this review has given me an outlet to bear the brunt of my recent frustrations.

Bookmarked in my Education folder.

It is ALWAYS a good idea to put a bass through a flanger. What's the matter with you.

for that cover.

and Deerhunter.

Just like I will listen to anything by The Warlocks. When they are on form they are fantastic. Warlocks are maybe a bit more varied that Black Angels too. I loved when they lost all the sunshine and went for the dark side of the psych in Heavy Deavy Skull Lover. Not had a record from them for years. What happened there?

Anyways - looking forward to hearing this.

and Dom - your reviews are always so sober and well considered. I really like them. Good work, as always.

it's pretty classic.

I'm only on track 4, liking it. So far, not much like the previous album. A lot bolder.

I am excited for this, even more so now. You really like this don't you.

My feelings on this record exactly.

because The Sun Smells Too Loud is my favourite track from the Hawk. I think Hardcore has hunger, power, emotion. I don't find it obvious or lazy for them as a band, it doesn't sound like anything they've done before. It's not CODY though.

harsh words for the third best album of their career, imo. (after Come On Die Young and Young Team, obvs)

did you just call Hardcore Will Never Die "slightly sterile"?

I don't find it remotely sterile. It positively seethes with passions and personality. I don't think it was intended as an intimate album but it definitely gets right into you.

This soundtrack sounds great. If by "greater sense of intimacy" you mean they are approaching CODY standards of harrowing delicacy then I am very excited indeed. And I was looking forward to this a lot as it was.

they're all terrible. Pretty much on par for shoegaze titles though, surely.

That's all I can comment on, I haven't heard it.

Thanks for keeping their throne warm, but you can get away now. The kings have returned.

In some ways I have become angrier since becoming a father - parenthood makes you far less patient with a lot of what the world has to offer, especially how second-rate everything aimed at children is. Shortly after becoming a father I smashed up a car and forced a man to the floor to pick up his dog shit. if I were in a band, I probably would have turned up the distortion too.

Is the sound of Aaron and Indra's baby from the original track.

wins!

Feels Like We Always Go Backwards?! The vocal and guitar melody in that are incredible.

I just don't think it is possible. Possibly more credit to The Formula than to them as a band, but then again other formulaic bands aren't this consistently good. Always happy to hear new stuff from them, and never disappointed.

They utilise more than just VU and J&MC though. You could have at least dropped an extra Spector credit for them, they lift that Ronettes (it's in the name) wall of sound atmos-pop feel too.

really looking forward to it. The Magic Place is indeed just that. A darker album with some instrument droning and tumbling sounds great.

it's on the TriAngle soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/tri_angle_records/sets/holyotherheld/

I am very happy. Soulful cosmic atmospheric. If he can develop it somewhere else and enrich it even deeper that would be incredible, but there's not much else to touch this that I've heard. There's artists doing similarly atmos/ambient things - Motion Sickness of Time Travel, Raime, Ghosting Season - but none produce exactly what this guy is doing.

ilikeitalot

With U was/is just so good, can't wait. I'm quite happy with more of the same just the now. Held has kept me rapt and expectant for the last few weeks. Nothing else to add until I hear it.

that my copy of Leisure has the Grateful Dead - American Beauty inside it. Oh.

not disappointed, although I disagree with a couple of things in it, but that's my problem. This album is a 10/10 for me, my favourite album by far. Hard to describe how I felt the first time I heard it - like you, I was really looking forward to this being released, probably my most highly anticipated album ever I expect - firstly because of the promised lack of horns and what that could mean, secondly after hearing Beetlebum and being jawdropped.

I guess I'm in a minority on these boards of thinking OK Computer isn't really full of the kind of experimental wizardry it is feted as containing - maybe it is in the technical background, but it doesn't hit me in the listening. Blur gets me every time. All it takes is the opening of Death of a Party to convince me. Even though I'd agree that it isn't 'his' album, Graham's fx do kind of own it. I never fail to be impressed by the quick nuanced shifts in tone, texture and way with noise used in a poppy song structure, but that's all the product of collaborative songwriting.

One of my favourite albums of all time.

perfect succinct summation, as geordiedave1981 says. I don't think the bad songs are that bad, more less enjoyable, and certainly no worse than anything on Leisure. It is overly long though - but the flabbiness and lack of quality control is an echoic indictment of the era in which is was made. although that's probably not intentional, it's certainly reflective and amusing to me. pointing out societies flaws with a flawed album.

For the highlights, of which there are well over 10, I'd give this an 8.

This is some fantastic writing. Really enjoying all these 21 reviews. Good work!

the cover is amazing. Moody pout against deep-to-sky-ocean blue fade? Classic. Almost as classic as the music. Still playing Forget over and over and I'm pretty sure this will be no different, it's already been on constant repeat for two weeks.

10/10 A++ *****

I've been reading some research into emotional processing of text speak. Seems that despite understanding what the word means, there is the same emotional reaction is not illicited as if it were the fully spelled out word. So all these kids txtng each other with abbreviated language and symbols are exisiting in an emotional void of communication pushing dead text into each other's eyes without and deeper connection or relation.

fun times 2012.

I wrote a massive reply to this review earlier but wasn't logged in. bah. Probably just as well though, it was mostly a bit of a rant about how Peaking Lights consist of about 1% krautrock - at most - 50% dub and 49% Reed Ghazala. In a nutshell. So, lucky that hasn't been commited to ther web.

I don't think it's watered down at all. has a breezier momentum than 936, that was totally baked and soporific but there's a few tracks on this that really rush. Dream Beat is really dense first go round too, I can tell (hope) there's going to be a lot to get out of it. Same goes for the whole album. 936 was my album of the year, but that took a couple of weeks to really warm up on me.

But not Peaking Lights, dear Miss Roby. Spend enough time with ver lads and you'll soon get some wafting organs you'll be less please to spend eight minutes in the company of.

But when I search 'Blondes' it's their website that appears first.

Nice review Sean. 10/10 for sure.

really looking forward to this.
really looking forward to this.
really looking forward to this.
really looking forward to this.
really looking forward to this.
really looking forward to this.

so much.

Way

I missed Simon Jay Catling. AGreed - He's on the podium too.

closely followed by Sam Cleeve.

the rest of you aren't even in the game.

kisses.

gxmx

Bring them to Brighton, ehhhh???!!!

so it's a bit early to call it, but I never got this same feeling from Black Cascade - There's a chance this might be my favourite album of theirs. It has some of the greatest WITTR moments in it and plays out as a fully realised entity. I guess all their albums are quite consistently Albums instead of collections of songs but this one has an even more detailed narrative to it.

All the choral vocals are the most effective and interesting of all their albums; the noise/feedback breakdown of Subterranean Initiation is immense and the bass drop off the end of it is awesome. It's full of ittle details like that, as if they transcended the transcendent/cascadian BM genus and can play around with ideas on a higher level which is exactly what this kind of black metal should be doing.

Noel, you do exaggerate very much in your opening paragraph! The only band Diadem of 12 Stars really sounded like was Weakling and they were not such an orthodox black metal band. WITTR really introduced an extra sense of femininity to BM - Mother Nature probably played her part - Elegance has always been there, but in a grandisoe, regal, reverent sense aimed toward nature (in the one subgenre which was/is not concerned with destroying the universe). Sensuality is something WITTR introduced that wasn't necessarily there before. What I really like, and what I think affronts te meatheaded BM fans is the duality of this music in it's tender visceral, peaceful ferocity. They can't handle their feminine side being tickled.

Blah blah BM blah.

you crazy. That set was all about the party!

Very Emeralds, more than anything else. Really lush and propulsive and ***SPOILER!!*** it totally pays off at 11 minutes - holds it until the end.

p.s., one for your list: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYNkVNXlfkw

Ash Borer, self titled cassette. Next level black metal.

How is anyone going to make a better album in the next 9 months?

Not possible.

http://seantcollins.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/57db04981f789a579948d85917e1e6972ca101a7.jpg

are you o.k?

that is all. thnx

and I agree with the general sentimwent here, but here's the reason I don't write more than a blog posts worth of prose at a time. In case this happens.