Cloudspeakers

By the time Montreal’s Land Of Talk made 2008’s Some Are Lakes, songwriter/guitarist/singer Liz Powell had grown weary of flogging the voracious, power-trio-driven songs of 2006’s Applause Cheer Bo... Lees meer

El-P’s production often busies itself as much with melody as with harsh percussion and enveloping shadows, but on the instrumental Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixx3, he relishes the chance to loos... Lees meer

The Way Out—The Books’ first album since 2005’s Lost And Safe—samples self-help tapes, Gandhi, and even a fellow who counsels the anxious that “there is no one right way to doing the dishes.” (Reli... Lees meer

Album: A; Bonus CD: C+R.E.M. has mastered the art of effortlessly mismatching itself from album to album, and even song to song, but the band didn’t start doing so until its third album, 1985’s Fab... Lees meer

Damien Jurado lets the people in his songs tell their stories through an almost serene lens. That only brings their crises into more devastating focus. “Cloudy Shoes” begins Saint Bartlett with a c... Lees meer

There are moments on Deftones’ first new disc since 2006—and first without bassist Chi Cheng, who’s been in a minimally conscious state since a 2008 car accident—that sound a bit like a band on aut... Lees meer

Subtitling your album A Triumph is simultaneously pompous and disarming, like a drunk who stands up on his barstool to give a grand speech, only to pitch over face-first. Frog Eyes specializes in h... Lees meer

Each song on Martin Dosh’s fifth album, Tommy—named for a dead friend—makes its math-jazz drums and instrumental fragments groove together like a coil of freshly exposed but healthy innards. Chatte... Lees meer

“I’m just runnin’ a temperature / Happiness is for amateurs,” Jason Collett drawls on Rat A Tat Tat’s first track, “Rave On Sad Songs,” perhaps mocking the role of a self-pitying folkie, embracing ... Lees meer

On Clipd Beaks’ 2007 album Hoarse Lords, each mangled analog-synth whoop, feral vocal, and pick-stabbed bassline entered the mix as abruptly as a set of tire spikes. The band makes these and ... Lees meer