RockSchool aggregator

Best New Tracks: Julia Holter: "In the Same Room"

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:49:00 +0200

"In the Same Room"

Album Reviews: Benjamin Damage & Doc Daneeka: They!Live

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:00:04 +0200

On paper, these bass-driven house producers seem like such a perfect match you'd expect any musical collaboration to mirror their work apart. It's surprising, then, how unlike their former selves They!Live turns out to be.

Album Reviews: Various Artists: Tally Ho! Flying Nun's Greatest Bits

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:00:03 +0200

The influential New Zealand label put together a 2xCD with songs from across its varied catalog to honor its 30th birthday.

Album Reviews: The Twilight Sad: No One Can Ever Know

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:00:02 +0200

The Scottish trio's frigid, militant, rhythmic Andrew Weatherall-produced third LP is more about obsession than release.

Album Reviews: Windy & Carl: We Will Always Be

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:00:01 +0200

The Michigan-based husband and wife dream-pop duo's newest resembles an orderly dissection of the relationship cycle, making it feel as if the usual barriers between audience and performer simply aren't there.

Album Reviews: Wilco: iTunes Session

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:00:00 +0200

This eight-song EP, comprised primarily of tracks from Wilco's most recent album The Whole Love, also finds them unearthing older song-oriented material that suggests they're getting back to the business of being a pop band.

Best New Tracks: John Talabot: "Destiny" [ft. Pional]

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:53:00 +0200

"Destiny" [ft. Pional]

Album Reviews: o F F Love: Probably Love

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:00:04 +0200

Stylized to abstraction, it is impossible to imagine Probably Love, o F F Love's debut LP, dropping any time but the present. One year ago it would've seemed obscure; one year from now, it will sound archaic.

Album Reviews: Waka Flocka Flame / French Montana: Lock Out

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:00:03 +0200

Produced mostly by Southside and Lex Luger, the collaboration between Waka Flocka Flame and French Montana sounds more well-grounded in the streets of Atlanta than the East Coast rap scene.

Album Reviews: Jason Urick: I Love You

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:00:02 +0200

Since the dissolution of his band Wzt Hearts, Jason Urick has made a series of records for Thrill Jockey that have moved through drone and dub-inflected atmosphere. This could be his best solo LP yet.

Album Reviews: Black Bananas: Rad Times Xpress IV

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:00:01 +0200

Black Bananas boasts the same personnel as Jennifer Herrema's other post-Royal Trux band, but she fashions it as an alternate-universe RTX, one that isn't afraid to absorb modern influences like synth-pop, hip-hop, French-touch house.

Album Reviews: Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:00:00 +0200

Leonard Cohen's 12th studio LP is a spare, low-key album rooted in blues and gospel-- maybe the closest thing he's made to "folk" music since the early 1970s.

Album Reviews: Laura Gibson: La Grande

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:00:04 +0200

The Oregon songstress spreads her wings and tries a few new styles on for size while keeping her earthly vision intact.

Album Reviews: Wymond Miles: Earth Has Doors

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:00:03 +0200

The Fresh & Onlys lead guitarist has produced a dramatic, high-concept solo EP that taps into 1960s and 1970s prog bluster, complete with song titles long enough to require commas.

Album Reviews: Peaking Lights: 936 Remixes 12" / 936 Remixed EP

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:00:02 +0200

Following their excellent psych-pop breakthrough 936, Peaking Lights return with two very different remix EPs.

Album Reviews: Underworld: Anthology: 1992 to 2012

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:00:01 +0200

This 25-song "best of" compilation collects two decades of Underworld's widescreen progressive house at 12"-mix lengths, rather than the highlight reel-style radio edits.

Album Reviews: Sharon Van Etten: Tramp

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:00:00 +0200

The Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter's powerful third album, produced by the National's Aaron Dessner, features guest spots from Beirut's Zach Condon, Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner, Julianna Barwick, and Dessner's brother Bryce, among others.

Best New Tracks: M.I.A.: "Bad Girls"

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:13:00 +0200

"Bad Girls"

Album Reviews: Future: Astronaut Status

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:00:04 +0200

With a handful of hits, placements on albums by Young Jeezy and Rick Ross, and a major-label debut on the horizon, the Atlanta rapper's new mixtape is his first big move of the year.

Album Reviews: The 2 Bears: Be Strong

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:00:03 +0200

This side project from Hot Chip's Joe Goddard and Raf Rundell make a goofy and big-hearted homage to the club-friendly pop they love.

Album Reviews: Shlohmo: Vacation EP

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:00:02 +0200

The L.A.-based beatmaker follow's last year's album, Bad Vibes, with a brief and beautiful three-song EP that shows an expanding mastery of sound manipulation.

Album Reviews: Porcelain Raft: Strange Weekend

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:00:01 +0200

The Italian-born pop artist Mauro Remiddi has covered an impressive amount of physical and aesthetic terrain in his years as a working musician. On his bleary, atmospheric Porcelain Raft debut LP, he sounds like he no longer exists on this planet.

Album Reviews: Lana Del Rey: Born to Die

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:00:00 +0200

After last year's hit "Video Games" and the endless remixes, leaks, think-pieces, and controversy that followed, it's finally here: the major-label debut from Lana Del Rey.

Best New Tracks: Chairlift: "I Belong in Your Arms"

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:26:00 +0200

"I Belong in Your Arms"

Album Reviews: Evan Voytas: Feel Me EP

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:00:04 +0200

The Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist singer's latest EP drops as a short but grueling tour of cloying soul-without-soul.

Album Reviews: Leila: U&I

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:00:03 +0200

Dumping the celebrity collaborators of 2008's Blood, Looms and Blooms, the London-based Iranian electronic musician's newest contains her most straightforward music to date.

Album Reviews: Rising: To Solemn Ash

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:00:02 +0200

This young Danish sludge-metal trio has a familiar sound, but the band's ability to pen vast, melodic anthems is sharp enough that originality isn't really an issue.

Album Reviews: The Caretaker: Patience (After Sebald)

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:00:01 +0200

Leyland Kirby follows last year's An Empty Bliss Beyond This World with the soundtrack to a film about German writer W.G. Sebald. Instead of jazz-age ballroom music, it samples and manipulates recordings of Franz Schubert's Winterreise.

Album Reviews: Schoolboy Q: Habits & Contradictions

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:00:00 +0200

Schoolboy Q is the most promising foot soldier in Kendrick Lamar's Black Hippy crew, a small circle of talented rappers currently reinventing West Coast hip-hop. His dark and moody second LP is a sumptuously produced and deeply enjoyable hour-plus slab of weed-clouded rap, but it's more than that. Schoolboy is an odd, genuinely unpredictable presence who sometimes seems to be rapping entirely for his own amusement. With his wearily flat voice, his lyrics deal with all the dark stuff of gangsta rap-- poverty, violence, drugs, hopelessness-- but it never bogs down in momentum or succumbs to despair. It's hard to imagine that there will be many more original or satisfying hip-hop long-players this year.

Best New Albums: Schoolboy Q: Habits & Contradictions

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:00:00 +0200