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Review
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C&U, Music, Review
Reviewed: Reykjavik! // The Blood
Reykjavik!: The Blood
(Kimi)
If Reykjavik!’s 2006 Glacial Landscapes, Religion, Oppression & Alcohol was the sound of innovative late-90s hardcore (think Refused, think Blood Brothers) gone epically irreverent, this is something stranger: an AmRep crunch spliced with manic vocals halfway between doom metal and hair metal. In places, this takes it to somewhere close to the over-the-top [...] -
C&U, Music, Review
Reviewed: Ty Segall // Lemons
Ty Segall: Lemons
(Goner)
Lemons is the second album from Ty Segall, a San Francisco-based garage-rocker with ties to Thee Oh Sees. (John Dwyer’s Castle Face Records released album no.1 from Segall.) And while Segall is fond of throwing the occasional odd effect on his guitar, his work here takes a far more traditional path than the [...] -
C&U, Music, Review
Reviewed: Portland Cello Project // The Thao & Justin Power Sessions
Portland Cello Project: The Thao & Justin Power Sessions
(Kill Rock Stars)
The name of the Portland Cello Project tells you much of what you need to know about them; additionally, the number of cellists ranges from eight to sixteen, and their repertoire can include anything from classical pieces to video-game themes. Their latest includes four collaborations [...] -
Live, Music, Review
Live: Dean + Britta, Crystal Stilts; Prospect Park Bandshell, 08.01.09
08.03.09 | Permalink | 3 CommentsI think I’m coming around on Crystal Stilts. An abundance of people whose opinions I trust have had good things to say about them in the past, and I’m finding my indifference towards them moving distinctly towards the “like” column. Seeing them live had a dual effect on me: on the plus side, I found [...]
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Live, Music, Review
Live: Thee Oh Sees, Golden Triangle, The Beets, German Measles; Glasslands, 07.02.09
Was Glasslands humid for this Thursday night show? Yes; yes, it was. I spent much of the show flashing back to younger days spent in basements and VFW halls under similar sweltering conditions, and occasionally wondering whether my beard had made things much, much worse.
German Measles were on first. I recognized a couple of the [...] -
Live, Music, Review
Live: Lightning Dust, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy; Santos Party House, 05.20.09
-The Part About Lightning Dust-
Something about space and silence. Back in my zine-editor days, I remember interviewing Ted Leo, whose live setup at the time involved an electric guitar and very little else. We got to talking about Billy Bragg’s Back to Basics, and how that album — that sound, really — was defined in [...] -
Live, Music, Review
Brief, Live: Pow Wow!; Permanent Records, 05.15.09
So: buoyed by some fine press and an interest in good pop music, I headed to Permanent Records last Friday to take in an in-store from Pow Wow!, whose New-Jersey-to-Brooklyn transition was one to which I could relate. I entered a song or two into their set, and immediately liked what I heard: organ- and [...]
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Me, Music, Review
Brief Self-Promotion: Record Reviews Edition
Quick note: in the latest issue of Death + Taxes (the Comedy Issue, featuring Danny McBride on the cover), I have reviews of Papercuts’ You Can Have What You Want, Pink Mountaintops’ Outside Love, Deradoorian’s Mind Raft, and Suckers’ self-titled EP.
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Live, Music, Review
Brief, Live: Cinemasophia, Jean on Jean, Ringfinger; Maxwells, 05.06.09
Cinemasophia: Quasi harmonies bolstered by a massive sound: shoegaze density with some postpunk precision thrown in. Also: some “this is our first time in New Jersey” banter, which was pretty charming.
Jean on Jean: Solid indiepop, performed solo; that I can’t think of much to say here shouldn’t suggest that I didn’t like the set.
Ringfinger: Also [...] -
Live, Music, Review
Live: Moondoggies; Crash Mansion, 04.25.09
Writing about The Moondoggies is harder than it sounds. It isn’t that their music veers into complex, atonal sections utilizing previously-unknown tunings, or that their lyrics reference forgotten philosophies developed in postwar Europe. Rather, it’s the same problem I’m having as I formulate thoughts on the new album from Portland’s Weinland: namely, how does one [...]
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Live, Music, Review
Live: Suckers, Tanlines; Glasslands, 04.24.09
Momentum can count for a lot. The last time I saw Brooklyn’s Suckers, on a bill a few months ago with Oxford Collapse and Real Estate, they played a set with no shortage of strong songs that nonetheless felt more like a collection of songs than a proper live set. Their songs are firmly rooted [...]
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Music, Review
recommended music writing: 24 february 2009
Trevor Kelley’s blogging again. This is, I’d say, a fine thing.
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Me, Music, Review
from the vault: the narrator / “anthems for us”
Two years ago, I profiled The Narrator for Death+Taxes. The piece never ran, for reasons that are unknown to me, and I was reminded as of the writing of the previous post that, hey, posting it here might not be a terrible idea. So, here it is, one of my favorite pieces of music-related writing [...]
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Me, Music, Review
in which efforts at self-promotion dovetail with previous ruminations on online magazines
Last month, I briefly discussed, with some trepidation, Issuu’s methods of displaying magazines online. Since then, the new issue of Death + Taxes has shown up on said site; should one want to see my reviews of Bell Orchestre, Obits, or Zero Boys, that’d be the place to go.
(I feel slightly awkward now.)
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the scowl
Tobias Carroll lives in Brooklyn, New York. He has covered music and books for a number of publications, and his fiction has appeared in THE2NDHAND, 3:AM, Word Riot, and as part of Featherproof Books' "Light Reading" series. He is presently working on multiple projects of varying lengths.
