Reviews

Artist: Animal Collective

Album: Centipede Hz

Animal Collective’s overall musical style has centered from the start on trebly, percussive yet wibbly-wobbly songs with a powerful hippie vibe. If I played Centipede Hz for fifty random newcomers, telling them sincerely that it’s happy-sounding music, I’d expect a little argument about “happy-sounding” (there can be an anxious undertow, sure), but more argument about “music”. They’ve been a critical favorite since their 2000 debut Spirit They’ve Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished was […]

Artist: Propagandhi

Album: Failed States

Propagandhi are a good band. Given my tastes, I doubt I’d keep buying each new album of theirs if I didn’t care about their lyrics, but maybe; they’re a good band. Starting off with a 1993 album as a primitivist hardcore punk group who couldn’t sustain songs for two minutes and rarely tried, they’ve learned structure, drama, pacing, and many chords they didn’t begin with. Chris Hannah’s singing is still punk-shouty, melodic by […]

Artist: Jesca Hoop

Album: the House That Jack Built

Jesca Hoop makes albums rooted in skewed folk-pop. Her melodies, however hummable many of them are, refuse to resolve neatly, and her arrangements often unfurl with a private logic.  The House That Jack Built features, for example, Ode to Banksy, girl-group pop by way of rapid Madchester drum shuffle, where the chorus hook is a key change that’s exactly one bar long. Or, much darker, there’s Deeper Devastation’s soft guitar, […]