Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
Instant album reviews is my favorite weekly column on the web, I use it as a way to filter out the LaLa.com list of stuff to decide what to listen to. With Pouria off in foreign lands, they needed a suitable fill in but since they couldn’t find one, you get me. I’ve been honing my pithy comments and I’m ready to go. Continue reading “New Release Round Up 3/30/10 — 39 Instant Album Reviews”
What do you get if you cross The Kaiser Chiefs, Kasabian and The Killers? Apart from an excited album reviewer with a weird fascination for the letter “K”, you get Sunshine Underground. At times sounding eerily similar to The Killers (especially the vocals) but also evoking the beat driven rock of the other K-bands mentioned. The Sunshine Underground were formed 2005 and Nobody’s Coming To Save You is their second album, following 2006’s Raise The Alarm. The album was released Feb 1st 2010 in the UK. I could not find a US release date at this point. The last trivia point before I get going is that the band is named after a Chemical Brothers song. Continue reading “Album Review: Sunshine Underground — Nobody’s Coming To Save You”
Ellie Goulding is the hottest new artist in the UK. Championed by Florence and The Machine, she won the BBC Sound of 2010 award along with the 2010 Brits Critic Choice Award which is given to the artist expected to breakthrough in 2010. She was born in Hereford England, about 10 miles from where I was born, though admittedly it was almost 20 years later. So should we believe the hype on her debut album Lights, which is out in the UK now and will be released in the US on March 16th? Continue reading “Album Review: Ellie Goulding — Lights”
Back in September I revealed my secret love of searching out cover versions on Youtube and posted six of them. You can read/listen to that here
So here we are in February 2010 and I decided to do it again. Check out these six songs and let me know what you think. Maybe post some of your own ? Continue reading “Spinning Platters Picks Six (More): Fun Cover Versions”
Every now and then you encounter something so weird and wonderful that you have to write about it. Today I’m reviewing an album that it’s hard to really classify as “good” but it’s just a joy to listen to.
Everybody Was In The French Resistance…Now!!! is Eddie Argos from Art Brut and Dyan Valdés from The Blood Arm. This is album of response songs, humorous, often speak-sung responses to well known tracks. To quote an analysis I read on www.allsounds.com:
“Avril Lavigne is a bitch. When she’s not gloating about her totally undeserved success or berating and sneering at young mothers, she is attempting to steal men from loving happy relationships.” and Everybody Was In…. attempts to fix this and a number of other pop injustices. Continue reading “Album Review: Everybody Was in the French Resistance…Now!!! — Fixing The Charts Volume 1”
I’m back, the weekly search for original and pithy comments continues. The holidays are coming and it’s time to drag myself away from my new Droid phone (where’s the LaLa app guys ?) and toil through the mass of holiday music to find the true gems of the week. There was really no huge standout for me this week. I loved the first track on the Switchfoot album and was quite pleasantly surprised by the late day discoveries of Dead To Me and For Against. If I am forced to choose then I will pick The Fountain by Echo and The Bunnymen with them getting the nod based on their historical relevance to me personally. Continue reading “New Release Round Up, 11/10/09 — 31 Instant Album Reviews”
“Fill in for Pouria” they said, “yes” said I. Little did I know what I was in for. Of course being someone who appreciates Hannah Montana but not the super-cool indie bands this could be a little different.
I’ll start by saying I wish I could have done this last week when the Editors In This Light and On This Evening was released. I loved their last album and eagerly awaited this one, I planned to write a full review but in the end could only muster one word (or perhaps many versions of one word) – unlistenable (which may, in fact, not even be a word). So there you go, I managed that review. Now onto this week: Continue reading “New Release Round Up, 10/20/09 – 42 Instant Album Reviews”
Nothing too spectacular here: if you’re looking for groundbreaking bands you may be in the wrong place. This is a simple list of six English bands that I love but that have made little-to-no impact across the Atlantic here in the US. They mostly share a bouncy guitar based pop/rock sound and, to some degree, a sense of pseudo punkishness. Continue reading “Spinning Platters Picks Six: English bands that should be more popular in the US”
Why am I reviewing a-ha you may ask yourself. Perhaps it’s because I am the most mainstream pop fan around here but in truth it’s because they released a fantastic album, Analogue in 2005, which, even with my very short attention span for music, remains on my playlist on a regular basis. This is not really the a-ha of 80’s “Take On Me” fame, though the members are the same as when the band formed in 1982: lead vocalist Morten Harket, guitarist Paul Waaktaar-Savoy and keyboardist Magne Furuholmen, the music they are making has grown up significantly. I am told their lyrics are Christian based but, to be honest, I don’t pay that close attention and just hear great songs. Analogue featured some amazing balladic tunes and I was happy to hear of the Europe-only release of their new album Foot of the Mountain. Continue reading “Album Review: a-ha — Foot of The Mountain”
Reverend and the Makers come from Sheffield, which gives them a huge head start in my book with that being the home of my all time favorite, Jarvis Cocker, and many others such as The Human League and Arctic Monkeys. This is a British band I had heard of but never really listened to. A French Kiss In The Chaos is the band’s second full length album following on from 2007’s The State Of Things which reached #5 in the UK charts. The album was released July 29th in the UK but currently shows no signs of a US release.
Continue reading “Album Review: Reverend And The Makers — A French Kiss In The Chaos”