music-and-concert-reviews-you-wont-see-anywhere-else
#21 album of 2012 – Transcendental Youth by Mountain Goats
Artist: Mountain Goats
Album: Transcendental Youth
John Darnielle (who alone or accompanied is the Mountain Goats) is my favorite folk songwriter of the current century, releasing a good-to-great new album every year and a half. He was an excellent lyricist as far back as the 1990s, declaiming away in a reedy voice over a hundred scratchy-sounding voice-and-guitar variants on the John Darnielle Fast Song and the John Darnielle Slow Song (Now With New Words ); kudos to you […]
#22 album of 2012 – Who’s a Fuzzy Buddy? by Bastards of Fate
Artist: Bastards of Fate
Album: Who’s a Fuzzy Buddy?
Who’s a Fuzzy Buddy?, by Bastards of Fate, is loud, weird, and goofy. It’s also one of those albums that can be accurately summed up, at least for consumer purposes, in one of those (A + B) / 2 equations that bad reviewers like to use as a crutch. A month ago, reviewing Jonny
Polonsky’s Intergalactic Messenger of Divine Light and Love, I said the album was halfway between […]
#23 album of 2012 – Summer Wilderness Program by Jon Lindsay
Artist: Jon Lindsay
Album: Summer Wilderness Program
Jon Lindsay makes power-pop music, a la the definition I started my Jukebox the Ghost review with. Where Jukebox the Ghost’s tunes remind me of young, flamboyant Elton John, Jon Lindsay — a smooth, graceful singer, and an imaginative user of synthesizers and percussion as well as pianos, strummed guitars, and violins — reminds me more of the occasional They Might Be Giants songs where they prove they could be a […]