http://www.blurt-online.com/reviews/ CD Reviews from Blurt en-us Sun, 21 Mar 2010 09:35:50 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1976/ (Bloodshot) www.bloodshotrecords.com For the better part of the last 35 years, Graham Parker's been known as an irascible agitator, an artist whose considerable talents have always found him toiling in the shadow of contemporaries like Elvis Costello and Tom Petty. Despite an enviable career and a prodigious output, he never quite achieved the wider acclaim he so cle ]]> Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1976/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1977/ (In the Red)   http://www.intheredrecords.com/   An immediate impression upon listening to the Strange Boys would be that they're probably having more fun than humans should be allowed to have and that it's infectious. The SBs blasted out of Austin last year riding their debut album, And Girls Club, with a viral popularity rarely seen. Over the last few ye ]]> Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1977/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1978/ (Sleeplikewolves)   www.rubythroat.co.uk.com   KatieJane Garside carries on in the ethereal, mysterious, profoundly arty vocal tradition of such other British female singers as Kate Bush and Elizabeth Fraser. In fact, everything she does seems a fully conceptualized art project - from her musical collaborations to her album packaging. (The jacket for out o ]]> Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1978/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1979/ (Courageous Chicken/NashVegas Flash)   www.jasonandthescorchers.com   The Reverend remembers watching...no, witnessing Jason & the Nashville Scorchers tear apart a local club - Cantrell's, maybe the Exit/In - no matter, 'cause those ol' boys ripped it up like Link Wray and took that building apart brick by (figurative) brick. Nobody, and I mean nobody ]]> Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1979/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1972/ (Sub Pop)   www.subpop.com     It's obvious now that on this, the third record by this New Zealand band (essentially the work of one man, an American) leader Ryan McPhun does not want to be pigeonholed by anyone. While the debut record sounded like Pet Sounds recorded underwater and 2007's Sea Lion, his first for the Sub Pop label, emphasized the isl ]]> Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1972/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1973/ (Bella Union)   www.bellaunion.com   Like fellow ex-Brunettes Ryan McPhun, James Milne is a New Zealand singer-songwriter and neo-psychedelic one-man band. Milne's Lawrence Arabia joins McPhun's Ruby Suns - reviewed here at BLURT, incidentally - in dabbling in trendy Afropop, but Milne has gleaned more of his style from late-60s acid-pop. On Arabia's seco ]]> Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1973/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1974/ (Undertow) www.undertowmusic.com   This, the second solo album by guitarist Steve Dawson - the third if you count his collaboration with singer Diane Christiansen -- is a gently sublime affair, one that rarely raises the volume above a whisper but still manages to make a gilded impression regardless. Dawson, whose day job finds him at the helm of the Chicago Am ]]> Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1974/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1975/ (Angular/Domino)   www.arco18.com   Even if Hidden didn't work - and it mostly does - it ought to be celebrated for sheer bravery. On this follow-up to 2008's Beat Pyramid, These New Puritans again build a framework of big thwonking hip hop beats. It's just that instead of overlaying them with stripped down rock songs, as they did on the debut, they have a ]]> Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1975/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1968/ (self-released) www.annacoogan.com   Clearly, there's nothing more commonplace these days that dewy-eyed singer/songwriters of a lofty Americana persuasion. Except, of course, for squabbling politicians and recalled drywall from China. So the fact that Anna Coogan operates within that template doesn't exactly set her up for any sort of distinction, at least not ]]> Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1968/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1970/ (Littlest Sounds)   www.commercemusic.com   Commerce is one of those little bands who could - and did. The Johnson City, Tenn., quartet may call its record label Littlest Sounds but the seven songs on this mini-album are big and bold and beautiful.   To skip through the tunes is to touch down on a number of well-known indie-pop avatars, from Arcade F ]]> Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1970/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1971/ (Matador)   www.matadorrecords.com   "What about the voice of Geddy Lee?" once pondered an indie rock wise man. Well, from the sound of "The Mighty Sparrow", the opening track off The Brutalist Bricks (Matador), the outstanding new album from Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, it seems as though the Washington DC-by-way-of-Brooklyn-by-way-of-North Jersey punk gr ]]> Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1971/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1964/ (Warner Bros.)   www.warnerbrosrecords.com     "I talk to God as much as I talk to Satan/Because I want to hear both sides," singer-guitarist Simon Neil announces on Biffy Clyro's fifth album, Only Revolutions. Yet the Scottish trio's punk-goes-pomp sound no longer has two sides. Musically, this set is nearly all pomp, with chest-pounding lyrics and ]]> Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1964/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1965/ (Arts & Crafts) www.arts-crafts.ca When a lead singer opts to forsake his band in order to go the solo route, most fans will barely raise an eyebrow. But when a band breaks out on their own sans their front man, it's likely to garner more than a little curiosity. Happily, there's no bad blood between Zeus and their usual collaborator, singer/songwriter Jason Col ]]> Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1965/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1966/ (Arts and Crafts)   www.arts-crafts.ca   Part artsy folkie, part pop tunesmith, Jason Collett moves with ease from acoustic-based ruminations to hip shake-inducing sing-alongs. On Rat A Tat Tat, the follow up to 2008's widely acclaimed Here's To Being Here, he embraces his retro influences, channeling early Dylan one moment and ‘70s AM radio the next, ]]> Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1966/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1967/ (Jagjaguwar)   www.jagjaguwar.com   The third album by Montrealean married duo Olga Goreas and Jace Lasek churns cathedral-sized anthems and clots them with MBV-ish miasmas of guitar murk.  It pits unstoppable melodic climaxes against paranoiac visions of espionage and betrayal.  Enormous in scale, absorbing, obliterating, this is an album that p ]]> Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1967/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1960/ (self released) www.fyfedangerfield.com Rodney Dangerfield complained he never got any respect, but for Fyfe Dangerfield, that likely won't be the case. After a successful tenure with Britain's wildly eclectic Guillemots, Dangerfield ventures out on his own with an album that has "classic" written all over it. Unlike the scattershot approach taken in his day job, Da ]]> Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1960/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1961/ (Dare To Care)   www.daretocarerecords.com We Are Wolves' last album, 2007's Total Magique, was an exciting whirlwind of electro-tinged punk rock, even if it relied a bit heavily on gimmicky synth warbles. The Montreal trio's latest however, Invisible Violence, finds the band advancing their sound in terms of texture and arrangement, while also borrowing from c ]]> Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1961/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1962/ (E1 Music)     www.e1music.us     When an album marks a pronounced step backward for a group, that album is usually doomed to be dismissed as a lesser piece of work. Unless, of course, it's a metal album. Only in metal is the notion of "getting back to basics" so highly prized, because, after all, it's the basics - the riff, the growl, the beat ]]> Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1962/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1963/ (Matador)   www.matadorrecords.com   I was a senior in high school when I first heard the music of Pavement.  It was 1992, and a friend of mine had picked up the then just-released Slanted and Enchanted at a record shop in New York City on the recommendation of the clerk who rang him up and he had called me to come over and listen to it. My friend qui ]]> Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1963/ http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1956/ (Manatee Records)   www.kelleyryan.net   As the former front woman for the astroPuppees, Kelly Ryan's dance card hasn't had much demand up until now. And yet, with this first solo outing, she's made a perfect pop album that even those with far more seasoned resume would probably take pride in calling their own.  It's tempting to credit producer Don Dix ]]> Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1956/