Kevchino.com - Current Reviews

Charlotte Gainsbourg - IRM

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Because | 2010 | Album
Reviewed By: Kacy Karlen
Review Date: 2/8/2010
Rating (out of 10): 9 - Simply Amazing.

What do you get when you mix seamless production, surrealistic lyrics, an airy alto, and a dark, eclectic sensibility? Charlotte Gainsbourg’s IRM, a honed sophomore release made all the more dazzling by indie darling Beck Hansen’s masterful composition skills. This is an album that benefitted from two years of intensive time in the studio. Hansen wrote the music, cowrote the lyrics, produced, and mixed IRM, and judging from the success of his 2008 collaboration with Danger Mouse, one wonders if the debut track, “Master’s Hands,” is not—at least in some sense—self-referential. Gainsbourg’s own contribution is fitting for a Gallic ingénue: the album’s lyrical content, stream-of-consciousness delivery, and conceptual vision be... [read full review]

House on a Hill - Nicest View of the War

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Self Released | 2007 | Album
Reviewed By: Chelsea Cohen
Review Date: 2/5/2010
Rating (out of 10): 9 - Simply Amazing.

House on a Hill are a mysterious band. The masterminds behind two discreetly known but well-made albums, the Brooklyn trio came on to the scene in a whirlwind in the middle of the decade, only to disappear a short time afterward. In their second album, Nicest View of the War, the elusive band gave their listeners a glimpse of their potent potential before slipping off into the musical abyss. Comprised of Cedar Apffel, Sara Kermanshahi, and Carlos Moncada, House on a Hill were a band who never said much about themselves. Rather, they allowed their music to speak for them, forsaking the haze of publicity so many bands spend their early days lost in. Driven by static chords and contrasted with subtle syncopations, the music is smart... [read full review]

Basia Bulat - Heart Of My Own

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Rough Trade | 2010 | Album
Reviewed By: Slava Heretz
Review Date: 2/4/2010
Rating (out of 10): 8 - Great.

Basia Bulat’s eclectic arrangements and hauntingly soulful voice turn what would be an otherwise tired, outdated folk sound into a tidy, feel-good cocktail of catchy pop and eerily somber melodies. Folk is no longer your mom and pop’s Peter, Paul and Mary sing-along. Bulat’s sophomore album shows that bubbly pop harmonies are not just for the likes of Britney Spears and Lady Gaga. Bulat grabs the cliché chords, throws them in your face, and through sheer creativity and courage, creates an ensemble of unique compositions and moods. The first few notes of fiddle in the opening to the album’s first single, “Gold Rush,” are a fine example of the way she creates a unique picture within every song. The tune makes you feel like you’re standing in ... [read full review]

Flaming Lips - The Dark Side of the Moon

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Warner Bros | 2009 | Album
Reviewed By: Jon Prusik
Review Date: 2/3/2010
Rating (out of 10): 6 - Promising. Heading up.

Fans of the band know that they’re notorious for doing covers that have the broadest of range, from Kylie Minogue to A Flock of Seagulls to Radiohead and now Pink Floyd. However, never have they been so bold as to cover an entire album. Along for the ride are an eclectic bunch of collaborators: Henry Rollins, Peaches, Stardeath and White Dwarfs. On the bright light of a computer monitor, this already has to seem like an odd bunch to put in one room for an album, let alone a cover album of a rock classic, but we would expect nothing less from our favorite sons of Oklahoma City. This iTunes exclusive largely reinvents the classic album, but in certain selections maintains the essence of the original compositions with the trademark Flaming... [read full review]

Beach House - Teen Dream

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Sub Pop | 2010 | Album
Reviewed By: Zeena Choudhry
Review Date: 2/2/2010
Rating (out of 10): 8 - Great.

Baltimore dreampop darlings Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally deliver a more tender continuation of their work with their third release, Teen Dream. If you’re not familiar with Beach House’s music, think Mazzy Star grown up, only with the drowsy vocal stylings of Nico amidst ebbing guitar tides, à la Cocteau Twins or Slowdive. Add a bit more smoke to that fragrant pipe, and you’ve almost got yourself some Beach House. Teen Dream opens with “Zebra,” a track that opens with pounding drum and picks up the pace as the song progresses. Backed by undulating guitar and the optimistic pomp of percussion, Legrand’s vocals soar and lend to the majestic quality of the song, which seems reminiscent of the sound of Grizzly Bear’s Veck... [read full review]

Album Leaf - A Chorus of Storytellers

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT
Sub Pop | 2010 | Album
Reviewed By: Josh Eck
Review Date: 2/1/2010
Rating (out of 10): 9 - Simply Amazing.

I’ve been a fan of The Album Leaf ever since I first touched the needle down to my copy of In A Safe Place. The delicate, swirling nature of his music sets a mood and helps create a beautiful backdrop to whatever it is you’re doing at the time. Unfortunately, I’ve not found any of his subsequent records (one LP and two EPs) to be nearly so affecting as In A Safe Place was—that is, until I hit play and began listening to “Perro,” the first track off of TAL’s latest album, A Chorus of Storytellers. Through this song, the album eases its way past your speakers, into your ears, and envelops your brain with an almost hypnotic force. The echoing voices in the background of the track, and the soft melody of the music, makes... [read full review]

Owen Pallett - Heartland

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT
Domino | 2010 | Album
Reviewed By: Hannis Brown
Review Date: 1/29/2010
Rating (out of 10): 8 - Great.

For Heartland, Owen Pallett’s third album, the orchestral songwriter opted to drop his stage name, Final Fantasy, and release under his own name instead. The move feels intrinsically connected to Heartland’s lyrical and musical material, which makes for Pallett’s most personal and heartfelt work to date. Whereas the songs of his last release, He Poos Clouds, dealt with the the magic of the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, Heartland follows the disturbing and murderous exploits of an old farmer named Lewis. Still, it’s hard to believe that the compositions aren’t just as much about Pallett himself. It’s easy to listen to the music without picking up on the underlying fictional narrative. Rather, many of th... [read full review]

Four Tet - There is Love in You

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT
Domino | 2010 | Album
Reviewed By: Josh Eck
Review Date: 1/28/2010
Rating (out of 10): 8 - Great.

I don’t say this very often, but it’s a good thing my first listen to Four Tet’s latest record, There is Love in You, was through my computer. If it had been on CD—or, preferably, vinyl—the opening track, “Angel Echoes,” would’ve had me thinking something was wrong with my hardware. The glitchy nature of it makes it sound like it just keeps skipping, which is surely the effect mastermind Kieran Hebden was going for. And once I followed up that first listen with a few more, I focused less on the skipping effect and more on the beauty and infectiousness of the track. There is Love in You is Four Tet’s first true full-length in nearly five years, a follow-up to 2005’s critically acclaimed Everything Ecstatic and another... [read full review]

Dirty Projectors - Ascending Melody

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT
Domino | 2010 | Single
Reviewed By: Erick Mertz
Review Date: 1/27/2010
Rating (out of 10): 6 - Promising. Heading up.

I suppose the proper context for the two-track 7” single Ascending Melody is The Dirty Projector’s Bitte Orca, the critically acclaimed 2009 album which would have provided its A-sides (it feels terribly satisfying and antique to use the terminology, “7” single” and “A-side” in the same opening sentence). Originally supposed to be packaged as a September 2009 EP—there’s some of that old lexicon again—these two come as a free download courtesy of the band. Why such a serendipitous introduction to a simple two-track recording? As with everything from the Brooklyn-based experimental rock band, the songs on Ascending Melody beg multiple listens (I gave it three; my run on the treadmill allowed that) even if they don’t c... [read full review]

Blue Roses - Blue Roses

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT
XL Recordings | 2009 | Album
Reviewed By: Tyler McWilliams
Review Date: 1/25/2010
Rating (out of 10): 7 - Very enjoyable.

Blue Roses is made of circular sounds and squiggly lines; nothing is angular, at least, nothing is mathematical or overwrought. Masters overthink their work to the point of self-defeat; their spark, their seed, their kernel of inspiration is dipped in human growth hormone and now stands fully grown, but fat and barely recognizable. Admirable the craftsman is, for he embodies the extent of what discipline can achieve. But the childlike know more—that is, they know less. They know when to stop and admire their own creation. That is not to say that young Laura Groves’s Blue Roses is unrefined or incomplete, though it does occasionally conjure the imagery of tinkerbells and naïve wanderlust. It is simply forthright and unostentatious; it... [read full review]

Pylon - Chomp More

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT
DFA | 2009 | Album
Reviewed By: Chelsea Cohen
Review Date: 1/22/2010
Rating (out of 10): 7 - Very enjoyable.

Pylon was an ’80s musical institution, setting the pace for an alternative rock scene that would transcend the decade. Yet, never contented by the present, they have pushed forward beyond for over three decades, bringing with them their dynamic recordings. Over two and a half decades after its first release, Chomp, the second studio album by Pylon has been remastered and rereleased under the amped-up name Chomp More. A founding member of the alternative rock scene springing out of Athens, Georgia, Pylon helped set the pace for the 1980s. Playing alongside the B-52's, Gang of Four, R.E.M., Talking Heads, and many others, Pylon was a force to be reckoned with and a solidifying factor in setting the sound that would define a ... [read full review]

Devendra Banhart - What We Will Be

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT
Warner Bros | 2009 | Album
Reviewed By: Erick Mertz
Review Date: 1/21/2010
Rating (out of 10): 7 - Very enjoyable.

There is a bumper sticker almost omnipresent to Northwest tailgaters: Keep Portland Weird. It’s the maxim of local music purveyor Terry Currier, who years ago saw the potential for this damp and foggy place to be the outpost of odd. Some years later, as his store, Music Millennium, stands as a beacon of local business, freak as a concept is in, its influence anointed as its own subgenre of all genres: freak folk, freak blues, freak soul. Whether Currier was acting as cultural medium or not, I don’t quite know. I’ve never met him. It’s cheeky to think he foresaw Devendra Banhart, but clearly, that genie is out of the bottle in the form of New Freak America. Banhart’s creative resume reads like someone appropriately New Freak, or Freak Ameri... [read full review]

Alela Diane - Alela & Alina EP

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT
Rough Trade | 2009 | EP
Reviewed By: Tyler McWilliams
Review Date: 1/20/2010
Rating (out of 10): 7 - Very enjoyable.

The Alela & Alina EP is floral and fragrant, like handpicked tealeaves percolated in steam by the hand of a hatmaker, a basket-weaver, a candlestick-maker, or a homeopathic healer. Alela Diane’s songs, whether those on the stunning The Pirate’s Gospel or the more grounded To Be Still, inspire saucer-eyed utopian yearners to keep the image of California alive, to keep on wanting an ideal that even Alela might find out of reach. There’s always been a golden glow of substance in Alela’s powerful tenor, an appeal of flannelled forthrightness. She was born on the ends of the known American earth—California—and on this “edge of America,” in the enlightenment and gold rushes alike, the dreamers and the window-gazers and the ha... [read full review]

Spoon - Transference

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT
Merge | 2010 | Album
Reviewed By: Nick Greto
Review Date: 1/19/2010
Rating (out of 10): 9 - Simply Amazing.

Chances are you don't remember the first time you heard a song from Austin, TX-based indie group Spoon. Chances are that moment was not an OMG moment; you didn't run right out and buy an album, you didn't call your friends to tell them about this "amazing new band," and you didn’t pick up a guitar and feel inspired to write your own tunes. But chances are, over the years since then, they have slowly risen in play count on your iTunes. Chances are, now that you have seen them live, you own every album, you've told at least a few friends about them, and maybe, just maybe, you picked up a guitar and felt inspired enough to write your own songs. Chances are the moment you find they have new music on the horizon, you break out all your o... [read full review]

Bonnie Baxter - When You Are Hollow

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT
Toilet Records | 2009 | EP
Reviewed By: Scot Bowman
Review Date: 1/18/2010
Rating (out of 10): 9 - Simply Amazing.

When Brooklyn duo Bonnie Baxter first released their debut EP, When You Are Hollow, back in 2008, they were virtual unknowns in a sea of aspiring musicians and artists in the industrial landscape of Bushwick. Much has transpired with the band since—a successful show at Music Hall of Williamsburg with Phenomenal Handclap Band and Apes & Androids, a fleeting name change, followed by a complete genre shift under the new moniker Shadowbox—but after revisiting this solid EP, one might beg to know if the duo will ever return to this sound. One thing is for sure, whatever genre Baxter decides to work in, she finds... [read full review]

Masterface - Freedom Tower

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT
Self Released | 2009 | EP
Reviewed By: Kevchino
Review Date: 1/15/2010
Rating (out of 10): 9 - Simply Amazing.

When the drums and vocals kicked in after thirty seconds on the opening song, “Ancientface,” I realized I was going to be engaged in a great album. Cedar Apffel and Rory O'Connor, both members of one of Brooklyn’s best music projects, Natureboy, have teamed up and put out a gem of an electronica record called Freedom Tower under the name Masterface. The band uses layered guitar loops, beautiful keyboard arrangements, and reserved but explosive drumbeats and a real understanding of the use of dynamics. The music also embraces some dub grooves and DJ-style trance effects, which really let the songs swell and crescendo. Masterface delivers an abundance of well-orchestrated hypnotic trance grooves with very tight and polished product... [read full review]

Nouvelle Vague - Vague 3

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT
Peacefrog Records | 2009 | Album
Reviewed By: Tim Needles
Review Date: 1/14/2010
Rating (out of 10): 8 - Great.

You have to love the French. Where else could you find a group like Nouvelle Vague (or “New Wave” in English) that reinterprets classic 1980s punk and New Wave tracks in their own unique acoustic bossa nova way with a host of different vocalists? Their newest album, 3, is a great sampling of tracks ranging from The Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” to the Go-Go’s’ “Our Lips Are Sealed” and The Talking Heads’ “Road To Nowhere,” but in truth the best tracks on the album aren’t always the most well known originals, with the possible exception of the classic “Blister in the Sun” done by singer Eloisia. The standout tracks are covers of songs like “Not Knowing” by Israeli/Belgian New Wavers Minimal Compact and “Ça Plane Pour Moi,” whic... [read full review]

Lee Harvey Osmond - A Quiet Evil

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT
Labor | 2009 | Album
Reviewed By: Eric Risdon
Review Date: 1/13/2010
Rating (out of 10): 7 - Very enjoyable.

Ever wonder what a lone, bad ass cowboy riding across the plain during a down poor in the pitch black of night would have playing on his iPod? Wonder no longer, Lee Harvey Osmond is here with a rotating posse of 17 strong, which even includes a few Cowboy Junkies. Tom Wilson (from Blackie and the Rodeo Kings) heads up this rugged band of Acid Folk’ pioneers for the bands first release, A Quiet Evil. The album’s title more than sets the mood for the entire album. Lee Harvey Osmond’s stew adds pleasant portions of Cowboy Junkies, Velvet Underground, Neil Young and Morphine in with their own unique blend of simmering delights. Hypnotic, melancholy rhythms are complimented by dusty horns, chiming steel guitars, haunting guitar riffs and mel... [read full review]

Vampire Weekend - Contra

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT
XL Recordings | 2010 | Album
Reviewed By: Erick Mertz
Review Date: 1/12/2010
Rating (out of 10): 10 - Essential. A must have.

The bellwether description of a quintessential American cowboy is having a “steely eyed look,” especially apt when he comes ambling into the saloon. Steely eyed in his aim, his reflexes, in that the fancy prairie rustlers in his midst shouldn’t rest until he moves on and his gaze averts. Vampire Weekend’s lead singer and guitarist Ezra Koenig isn’t exactly that steely eyed American cowboy. Of course, he doesn’t position himself or his band as such. Koenig and the rest of his NYC quartet are another brand of dude—they’re a brand distant from the impassive, stolid denim-clad man. They’re worldly, diverse. They walk into the saloon of modern rock with a taste for two things: a drink and the dance floor. The first offering from Contra... [read full review]

Editors - In This Light and On This Evening

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT
Fader Label | 2010 | Album
Reviewed By: Chelsea Cohen
Review Date: 1/11/2010
Rating (out of 10): 7 - Very enjoyable.

The third studio album from the ever-rising Editors was met with great anticipation, probably more than it warranted. With substantial followings in Europe and a well-respected indie status in the States, fans the world over were speculating en mass whether this release would be the one to launch the band into international superstardom. Conversely, fear surmounted in the music world that this album would be little more than another attempt to mix their sound up without actually changing anything, thus neither growing into the new, nor improving upon the old. Neither of those predictions came to pass, as album three, In This Light and On This Evening, brings out a new side of the British quartet, not boisterous enough to skyrocket, b... [read full review]