Two reviews of mine are up this week at Dusted.
On Besnard Lakes’ The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night:
The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night resembles the group’s last full-length 2007’s excellent The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse, but it also calls to mind genre-straddling works like Catherine Wheel’s Chrome and Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs — albums that borrowed elements from stylistic movements without ever being of them. The Besnard Lakes are fond of songs that clock in past the five-minute mark, but neither the prog nor the post-rock label fits; the guitars do take on a physical loudness, but filing this under “shoegaze� would be inaccurate.
And on White Hinterland’s Kairos:
While the group’s first album called to mind Madeleine Peyroux and Petra Haden’s collaboration with Bill Frisell, Kairos is more likely to earn Dienel comparisons to Tune-Yard’s Merrill Garbus and the Dirty Projectors’ Angel Deradoorian, both vocally and in the larger sense of musicians welding a fondness for soul balladry with cut-and-paste sensibility.