Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

I didn't have a lot of hope for ANIMAL by (S)he. I mean, the concept just looked wrong... Three black female singers and a couple of white guys who look like they hang out with your nerdy little brother. I thought, “Uh oh, Destiny’s Child meets Erasure.” I was wrong. ...

If you’re ready to party, Altered State will provide the soundtrack. In their own words their new album “Get Real,” is made to be heard at Thanksgiving, BBQ’s, staff functions, housewarming parties, New Year’s Eve celebrations, birthdays, during long drives, short drives, long weekends, sex, when school’s out, spring break, ...

Autodrone is a quartet that has been kicking around New York since 2002, fronted by eye candy Rachel Lauria on vocals and Angel Lorelei (no, I don't believe her parents named her that, either) on bass and keyboards. PANIC, their latest EP, mines the punk vein somewhere between L7 and ...

CATCH AND RELEASE was a chick flick that was released and few caught. I'm not sure what it was about; I consider a chick flick to be the first half of HOSTEL, every minute of …ALL THE MARBLES, you know what I mean. The genre is kind of lost on ...

I hate spiders. I mean, I HATE spiders. A 12 gauge shotgun locked and loaded with double-ought buck is not an overreaction to a corner critter. So…a movie about one? Nope. With a talking pig? Heck no. If I want to listen to a talking pig, I can see one ...

As implied by their name, Dead Leaf Echo captures a dark melancholy sound, mixed with sweeping ethereal guitar, relentless down beats, and broken U2 style vocals to create the very unique mixture evident on "Faint Violent Whiff." With their five-song EP, Dead Leaf Echo as struck a chord in the underground indie ...

Ok, I'm going to keep this short, which happens to make sense to me.   I'm 23.  Earth, Wind & Fire(EWF) is 38 years strong.  A majority of their best body-movin' stuff came out before I was born.   As a matter of fact, if I had to put money ...

I found it ironic to be listening to an album called PRAYER OF DEATH during a four day period of uninterrupted mental and physical pain, via influenza, in which I truly embraced the album's title concept… over and over.   Between bows to the "porcelain god" and fever sweats I ...

Before we go any further, what is about to pass might mean a little more if I'm up front with you and say that, prior to hearing ME, MYSELF & I, there wasn’t much Fat Joe being played at casa de Hartlaub. There was no particular problem, other than the ...

Welcome to yet another three hour show in the long, strange trip of the Grateful Dead.  Live at the Cow Palace, New Year’s Eve 1976, captures the original jam band in peak form. As a special treat, The sound quality easily surpasses that on most live recordings from this era.  In ...

There is no question that Asians are underrepresented in hip-hop. You’ve got Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Middle Easterners…but very few Asians. If you think of Asian influence in hip-hop at all, you probably think of, and only of, Jin. Jin is from New York, and had a run on 106th & PARK several years ...

What can be said about John Mayer or his album, CONTINUUM, that hasn't already been said.   I mean this review is getting in several months after the release date to begin with.  The music awards have been awarded, the videos shot, the singles released, the new material emerging.   ...

Kenny Wayne Shepherd travels down the back roads of the South in search of a dying breed, the Delta Blues man. He sets out to document and play with anyone he can find before it is too late. The vast majority of these musicians are in their latter years, most ...

Jazz marches on. It has been declared dead on more than one occasion, and it’s hard to argue against the proposition that at times the genre is its own worst energy, and yet it continues, a home for the best of musicians who play for the joy of it, rather ...

The French Canadian band Malajube has created a vast sonic landscape on their new album, Trompe-L’oeil. In English the title means the art of illusion. Throughout the dozen tracks which comprise the album Malajube paint pictures with the music that are so vivid it doesn’t matter that the lyrics are ...

ODDISEE PRESENTS FOOT IN THE DOOR ticked me off, royally, before I even got it into the CD player. I noticed while scanning the list of 34 tracks on the jewel case that 7 of them had asterisks (for those of you who have been subjected to public school subsequent ...

Razzor Dixxon is Dale Lepiarz and Doug Smith, a couple of self-styled “hippies who play country music.“ Some of the tracks on their self-titled CD indicate that they are also a couple of Nashville songwriters who, in the parlance of the country music industry, have been looking for “a cut,” ...

Redlight Cinema is an Indie / Garage rock band hailing from New York. These guys have a kind of unique style of music and, I have to say, they're pretty good at it. If I had to compare Red Light Cinema to somebody else out there, I would have to say that ...

GREY TOWN by Roy Davis is lodged solidly in familiar Americana territory. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I have been unkind enough elsewhere to suggest that a good deal of Americana releases sound as if somebody in Texas had been slapping five hundred different labels onto the same ...

The Sound Providers are a production duo out of San Diego who have dropped a couple of long players and a bunch of 12-inch discs over the last few years, initially with rapper Profile and then on their own. Their new disc, TRUE INDEED, is a collaboration with Florida rapper ...

Tape Recorder Three is Todd Zack, a one-man show who plays all of his instruments, fairly competently and sings in a disembodied voice that is a cross between an extra-snotty Jim Morrison and a more accessible Lou Reed. Which, I think, kind of sums up CHARACTER AMOUR, Zack’s first long-play ...

Tech N9ne has been around for a long time, falling in and out of deals that took more than they gave. He started his own label, Strange Music, some years ago, and began dropping his own tracks as well as those of others from his native St. Louis. He is ...

One of the things that I absolutely love about doing what I do is that it gives me the opportunity every once in a while to get blown away by a band I've never heard of. I have a subscription to SPIN, but never read it; if I did, I ...

The Devil’z Rejects consists of Bomshot and Jus Allah, and if the name of the group and of the project, NECRONOMICON, didn't clue you, it is a sure bet that the gents on this CD did not put any time in on a public job where their primary duty was ...

On "Let’s Do It!," The Slow Burn deliver a well-balanced mix of blues, alt-country and three part harmonies. Based out of the Washington DC area, each member brings both experience and unique qualities to the table.  Lead guitarist Paul D’Andrea indulges in the occasional solo and trades off well with ...