Bottom line: Good but not excellent, familiar but not memorable. As the ringleader of New Pornographers, one would (rightly) expect a bit more from A.C. (or Allan Carl, as his mother calls him).
I’m on the record about Ohio: I don’t like going there, I don’t like to watch OSU play and I definitely don’t like 98 Degrees (Cincy natives, the lot).
Drummer Mike Clark caught the attention of drummers when he played with Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters on Thrust. His hyper-syncopated funk set new standards.
From the moment that “Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ” mutates from lo-fi murk to a pounding, wall-of-noise sea chantey, Titus Andronicus make their intentions clear.
Jim Hall, a grand master of mainstream jazz guitar who has always maintained a sense of adventure, and Bill Frisell, who integrates digital loops with rustic Americana, have joined forces for a sup
Scottish ambassadors break into America with longing narratives of infidelity, gangs and murder, and drench it all in swarms of fuzz, keys and throbbing, steady beats.