Album Reviews

It’s AV Super Sunshine’s world; we’re just living in it. Few performers of today burn as bright as this. A new AV Super Sunshine release doesn’t mean just a new song; the writer, performer, and auteur never put out singles without a video and/or multiple remixes accompanying the core track. …

The ten songs on Pretty Embers’ first release Under exist well within an established musical style but, fortunately, bear their own identity. The Southern roots of the band offers us a lesson about preconceived notions; I, for one, wouldn’t have expected a band with avowed influences such as Paul McCartney, Death Cab …

  Putting emotional poetry on paper can be cathartic, but it can also translate as trivial when it isn’t read from the right perspective. Singer/songwriter Chloe Agnew isn’t giving us the opportunity to misread her emotional expressions in the new single and music video “On My Own;” her singing frames …

Neon Dreams are a power duo that critics on the international level can’t seem to get enough of at the moment, and while I hadn’t been listening to their work ahead of hearing their new collaboration with the talented Mthandazo Gatya, I can say now that I understand why they’ve …

A smoldering string arrangement peeks at us from behind a curtain of passive silence as we set upon A Place to Bury Strangers’ new single and music video “Playing the Part.” Though the first thirty seconds of this track more or less give us a pretty solid indication as to …

Forget the big intros, the lusty solos, the synthetic faceting, the throwbacks to 1970s personality and 1960s expressiveness. Jane n’ the Jungle are trimming all the fat off of their dynamic rock n’ roll sound in the new single “Ain’t No Other Way” this fall, and much as the song’s …

Meditative Animal’s Nick Mirisola has earned his reputation as one of the most promising songwriters in music today. The foundation of his gifts blurs genre borders while incorporating recognizable strands and traditions. It’s what artists in any medium are supposed to do – learn well what came before, expand on …

Big guitars. Even bigger drums. A voice that can charge into the fires of hell and come back sounding more commanding than ever. Motive Black has all the right pieces, the right ingredients if you will, to make the perfect rock n’ roll cocktail when they get together in the …

Creeping up behind us like a stalker in the shadows of the night, it’s a little difficult to tell whether the synthesizer we first hear in the opening bars of “These Things” is friend or foe, but as the song presses on, Hasten Mercy makes it clear that we have nothing to …

From the courtyard to the foyer and even back in the bedroom, all eyes are on Dici in the big brother-style music video for his new single “Flip,” and while it’s a simple concept for a relatively straightforward hip-hop track, what it alludes to is undeniable for those of us …

Like scenes from a fever-induced dream, Nané’s music video for “Seventeen” is both eclectic and highly stimulating, turning us down one dark alley after another whilst producing what could be one of the most stirring rock soundtracks I’ve come across in a video this year. There’s no getting around the …

Cut and dry doesn’t have to always mean retro in hip-hop, and from the looks of his new single “Rock Mics Properly,” rising star Custom is intent on driving this point home this October. Rather than sticking with a formulaic pattern akin to something the old guard would have fashioned …