Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

…”We traveled around the world collaborating with the most happening musicians, authors, scientists and thinkers… 70 % Water, 18% Carbon, 5% Nitrogen, 2% Calcium.”   … 1 GIANT LEAP is a twelve-step program (tracks) with a very unique time signature - 4/4²… but I think this is not: water, carbon, ...

1000 Miles from Home’s 6 song EP, Collusion, is a good, solid collection of songs that fits well as a CD to throw into the player when you’re looking for something different, but can’t put your finger on anything in particular. If you’re not blown away the first time you ...

A kitchen sink of variety awaits those intrepid enough to peruse the The Strangest Colored Lights by 13 Ghosts. It’s an album that delights as well as frustrates on early listens, as you hear a song you like, and then fret as they change to another mode altogether, fall in ...

The passing of guitarist/folk archivist John Fahey last year makes this new compilation even more poignant. A tireless innovator who re-introduced the lost beauty of the finger-picked, acoustic steel-sting guitar (by way of several samplers on his own Takoma label), Fahey was credited for launching the careers of Leo Kottke, ...

Judah Bauer is Jon Spencer's un-venerable right-hand man -- the sort of desperate-looking but solitary-loyal guitarist to bum smokes, bounce riffs and bury the sloe-gin with.  While Spencer has been bitten by the soul power for recent recordings, Bauer (as 20 Miles) uses his summer vacations to dig a little ...

Mississippi natives 3 Doors Down are a band who emerged in 2000 with the chart topping single, "Kryptonite" and went on to sell more then six million copies of their debut album, The Better Life. The foursome returns this year with their sophomore effort, “Away From The Sun.” Produced by ...

You know those old songs where a group of men is singing a romantic tune and all of a sudden some guy is soaring above the rest? The guy that's singing those sweet high notes is the tenor of the group. Three of these men from famous groups have gotten ...

The last two words of the album title pretty much describes the direction 31 Knots is coming from on their newest release, The Days and Nights of Everything Anywhere. Other than saying that there’s a progressive bent to the proceedings, I’d defy anyone to come up with a categorization for ...

A tone-deaf version of The Calling meets a less talented Matchbox 20. This is what comes to mind when I listen to 34 Satellite's album "Stop". This album was incredibly bland and boring. It lacked feeling and well, to put it bluntly, talent. The music itself was rather good until ...

Bobo Bazinsky in the Bronx will scare you in the same way that a big city scares an out-of-towner.  It’s loud, hectic, in-your-face, and diverse.  But behind the beeps and traffic is a silver lining of humanity and culture.  All of this, believe it or not, is actually captured by ...

Disproving the "three strikes and yer out" adage, Los Angeles' 3rd Strike is in fact just stepping up to the plate. With punishing riffs and palpable lyrics, this street-wise quintet raps, roars, and redeems long and loud on the fiery opening track "Flow Heat," melodicallyreflective ...

40 Below Summer emerged in 1998 from the local circuit of the New Jersey underground. They released an indie album entitled Sideshow Freaks which soon found its way to the hands of No Name Management, (Slipknot, Fear Factory), and a management deal soon followed. After coast to ...

The first thing that jumps out at ya - and it's cliché but it's Punk Rock without the piss and vinegar so take it for what it's worth, a mischievous grin or sour puss, your call, but ain't nobody gonna be misled to thinking these guys are the razor and ...

Never more have I listened to an album desperately hoping the artist gets the proper production values they deserve on future outings.  What you have here on Postcards from California by 54 Seconds is an eclectic meeting of styles and talents that never reaches its lofty and rightful home…due to bad ...

At first listen I'd sum 'em up as a thinking man's Hard-Core -- carefully selected exceptions aside. Lyrically we're stuck in second gear with rants about discontent, discord, and insolence -- outside the lyrical lines, "Bathroom Floor" notwithstanding, is where the trip begins. ...

Rhino Records had the last word on 70’s compilations in 1998 when they unloaded their shag rug adorned classic multi-disc Have A Nice Decade on the box set market.   Not to be outdone (even by themselves!), the brainy record company has now given the same treatment to the decade of ...

  8Ball is a Memphis rapper who has been around for well over a decade, dropping joints intermittently throughout. LIGHT UP THE BOMB is an ambitious project that results in what is arguably his best work to date.8Ball is Dirty South, from beginning to end, with an emphasis on Atlanta ...

Some record labels have identities. You don't pick up something on Real World, for example, and expect it to be kill-your-parents death metal, or purchase something on Death Row for that impressionable six-year old niece thinking that it's gonna be in the vein of Jim Brickman. So, too, with Epitaph. ...