[ALBUM REVIEW] RYE RYE - GO! POP! BANG!

In 2007, I saw a pipsqueak of a girl come on stage to perform alongside M.I.A. With her childish voice and tomboy attitude, I was an instant fan. Due to several delays and a baby, it took three years for her debut album, "Go! Pop! Bang!" to be released. Unfortunately, it may not have been worth the wait. Her three popular songs "Sunshine", "Never Will Be Mine" (ft. Robyn), and "Bang" have already been heard for at least a year. "Bang", my personal favorite, is even a part of her album title, but yet only featured on the deluxe version. Blaqstarr also produced the song as he has helped with many of her previous raps available on YouTube. Although the first song, "Drop" is pretty strong and true to her quick and high speech talents, the rest of the album falls into a bland pop category. "DNA" and "Crazy Bitch" (ft. Akon) have catchy dance pop choruses that could easily blend in with the rest of Nicki Minaj's latest hits--(And I don't mean Miss Minaj's "Black Barbie" days. I'm talking about the bland stuff that she has been performing this year on Good Morning America.) She did manage to catch my ear with "Anything You Can Do" (ft. M.I.A.), which samples Annie Get Your Gun. With all my disappointment, this review could be a completely different story after a couple drinks in Boystown and Rye Rye playing on the dance floor.

By; Natalie Burris June 19, 2012

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[ALBUM REVIEW] BEACH HOUSE - BLOOM

Fans of Beach House, listen up. Their new album dropped and it sounds just like their last album. This is great news because when a band hits its stride the way Beach House has, you don't want them to change a thing. Teen Dream was the aural equivalent of being day drunk on wine, dutifully holding the dull of reality slightly at bay for its full running time. If you are like us, you wore Teen Dream's record grooves down to a smooth sheen from overuse and are ready for some new material capable of sending you on those short journeys of emotional detachment. Bloom gives us that. These ten songs take us to the same place and uses the same tools to get us there: slowly oscillating guitar lines, droning synth waves, tinny electro drum beats, and Victoria Le Grand's plummy, androgynous voice. Even when sticking so close to the original palette, Bloom manages to somehow sound more colorful than its predecessors, like it's painted on a larger canvas.

Opener "Myth" reaches ridiculous heights of glorious melancholy. How are they doing that? The guitar is only playing four notes over and over and it sounds like they brought in some bro to hit a crash cymbal in the back of the room every eight beats. Same as with most good music, the songs here are greater than the sum or their parts. "Wishes" is another example of this phenomenon. Its pace is so deliberate and unhurried, the vocals so swollen and restrained that its slow burning power sneaks up on you.

In a way, these are perfect summer songs. They're not sunny pop jams like most typical summer songs. These songs inhabit quieter summer moments, effectively grabbing the hands on your clock and bringing them to a temporary halt, stretching out the notoriously short season for a few fleeting moments.

By Philip Stone; May, 14 2012

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[ALBUM REVIEW] NITE JEWEL - ONE SECOND OF LOVE

 “I’m a broke record, you have heard this before” is how Nite Jewel, aka, Ramona Gonzalez starts off her latest album. Yes, heavy 80’s synthesizers are back with a vengeance, and the resurgence of minimal wave has made itself known throughout many a used record store in North America. She’s not the only artist taking this approach, but let me tell you folks, she does it extremely well. If Madonna and Lady Gaga went through a gothic phase and had an obsession with analogue synthesizers, I imagine their music would sound something like this.  On “One Second of Love”, Ramona hits arpeggio and never looks back, while quipping ‘One second of love, one second of love!’ throughout the song. “Mind and Eyes” is another poppy gem reminiscent of Hall ‘n Oates. Her voice soars beautifully on this record quite often, but she also manages to throw in little slide guitar licks, which keeps the songs grounded and poignant. This is the Siouxsie Sioux come back record you’ve always pined for. Strap on your Doc Martens, paint those nails black, and throw on this record before you hit the club. 

By Randy Nieto; April 20, 2012

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[ALBUM REVIEW] EZRA FURMAN - YEAR OF NO RETURNING

Three months into 2012 and this already feels like the album of the year. Packing up his knapsack of tricks, Ezra Furman temporarily parted ways with his band, The Harpoons, and headed toward the ol' americana highway to venture a solo voyage- but not before stopping by his two favorite uncles Tom and Alex (Waits and Chilton), who passed down to him their secret roadmap. Ezra followed the path, and with little pitstops of his own, returned with the greatest road-trip souvenir this side of a Highway 61 road sign, "The Year of No Returning". The album begins with "Dr. Jekyl & Mr. Hyde", taking instrumental influence from Swordfishtrombones-era Waits. I await Wes Anderson to pick-up this song for his next slow motion scene. From the beginning, surprising instrumentation chimes in at the perfect moments and continues throughout the entire record. "That's When It Hit Me" has a fifties rock n roll sound, while "Lay In The Sun" is like a Big Star version of a fifties doo-wop classic. "Bad Man" captures the best parts of a Daniel Johnston song with whispers that slightly haunt you--in the friendly ghost way, of course. "Cruel, Cruel World" stays true to an early Dylan sound while, "American Soil" is a protest song in the best Dylan tradition, preachy (even says he's going to write us a Bible!)-but amazingly doesn't come off as sanctimonious. This is definitely the breakthrough album for Mr. Furman. What began as a musical adventure turned out to be a vision quest. Let's hope he continues to bring us mementos of this scale from his further musical explorations.

*The Year Of No Returning has been deemed a "BFF" meaning Burris Family Favorite. This term had not existed preceding the album. Thanks, Mom.

By Natalie Burris; March; 6, 2012

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[ALBUM REVIEW] LANA DEL REY - BORN TO DIE

Despite all the internet hype, Lana Del Rey is just a gif on your tumblr dashboard. She's like a pretty actress who woke up one day deciding to make a pop album (Scarlett Johansson, anyone?), and it would be more enjoyable had the record belonged to such a genre of wannabes. The production is well done with beats and string arrangements that make tracks such as "Diet Mountain Dew" and "Radio" worth a listen. Unfortunately, Miss Rey doesn't take any risks and with little connection to the music, leaves us dragging along--almost wanting to help her create something better in the future. Until then, I plan to ignore her wallpaper music the next time I'm eating a Panera bread bowl.

By Natalie Burris; January 31, 2012





Born To Die on VINYL is available for Pre-Order from Insound via Interscope HERE

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[ALBUM REVIEW] BON IVER - BON IVER

This isn't a scoop; you've heard about Bon Iver from Bon Iver. By now, you may have also heard about the mythology of his previous album, how dude's relationship with his boo went sour, dude got mono and went on a Ted Kaczynski journey of rural Midwestern self discovery and came back with For Emma, Forever Ago. You've heard about how Kanye flew this awkward Midwestern kid out to California to lay down vocal tracks for the largest hip-hop album of the Obama era.  You've heard about his crazy falsetto vocal style, and how parts of this new album, Bon Iver, sounds like Peter Cetera or Bruce Hornsby or Michael McDonald or some kind of Yacht Rock from the '80s, but much better.  You've probably seen him on Fallon covering Bonnie Raitt, or seen that tweet from ?uestlove of the Roots saying Bon Iver played the most beautiful music he's seen on late night TV.  You guys are using the internet, so you obviously know all of that and more by now.

We at TMB simply want to give Bon Iver a high five as he takes his victory lap.  It's been a month and this record is still burning up our mp3 players.  That moment one minute into "Calgary" when the synth drops for a second, then resurfaces in synch with the drum machines still gives us chills.  The dueling drum parts panned to opposite speakers in "Holocene" still cause’s goose bumps.  The deep power of Vernon's surprising non-falsetto voice in "Minnesota, WI" still feels like a gut shot.  This is real music, the type you listen to with your whole body.  Its music we're proud of, but not because we had anything to do with it; Bon Iver sounds like it belongs to us because it's too strange to belong to any single music scene.  This doesn't sound like the folk of For Emma.  It is still sad and weird and beautiful, but now it feels like a colorful work of a collage artist working with the memories of a Midwest childhood in the '80s. At times it's bleak and gray, lonely and vacant, but still lively and lush.  This is a four season album.  This is a benchmark being made right before our eyes, music that sounds better on the 15th listen than it did on the 14th.  We, the voices of the internet, have already lost this artist to Starbucks, Jimmy Fallon, and Kanye West. Nevertheless, as voices of the Midwest, we salute Justin Vernon and company for creating something this important.

By Philip Stone; July 19, 2011

New album Bon Iver is available now via Jagjaguwar Records HERE

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