Artist: Mars Volta

Album: Noctourniquet

I’ll start with a quick review for those already familiar with Mars Volta. Noctourniquet (their sixth album) is their first with song lengths averaging under five minutes, jettisoning the lengthy solos and ambient excursions. Its dark lyrics are, on average, the least obscure / most randomly effective of their career. Its drumming, with new drummer Deantoni Parks, is a bit more straightforward, sometimes pounding home the various time signatures instead of fracturing them. […]

Artist: Kate Miller-Heidke

Album: Nightflight

Kate Miller-Heidke entered my life with her second album, Curiouser, one of my two favorite albums of 2010. Witty and tuneful, danceable and good-natured, sung both prettily and expressively by a woman unafraid to make brief, surprising use of her opera training, it was for me the greatest album of mainstream chart-pop since … well, ever. The Beatles’ best albums were mainstream only because the mainstream ran to catch up with them; Curiouser […]