Reviews by kuvien

I hear this album rocks.

Pedestrian, uninspired music, but it sounds like they're having a lot of fun making this album, so go on. Dull parties suit some people. Anyway, I had a massive crush on Lady Miss Kier way back in high school. Listened to "Groove Is in the Heart" on repeat while worrying about the hole in the ozone layer. "Groove" isn't on this album, though, and that makes me sad. I also miss having hair.

Sit down for 18 minutes of music loosely affiliated with the eighth-century Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailnge. Oral tradition updated for the 21st century, complete with an opening rocking jam that leads into more delicate, sometimes-whispered territory where accordion and marching drums remind us that this music is all Decemberists and has nothing to do with the origins of the ancient tale.

This album is inspired by two distinct stories, the first being a Japanese folk tale about The Crane Wife (a cautionary tale of the incompatibility of love and greed), and the second, Shakespeare’s *The Tempest*, being explored in the epic three-part song, “The Island”. This music is basically NPRcore folk, giving us the briefest of history lessons as it touches on grisly real-life events.

Parapets and coronets. That’s all you need to know about this, letting you know that this album is doing what The Decemberists do best: indulging in pleasant music that delves into anachronistic themes of pure charm.

This guy’s voice really brings the whole shtick together, that and the lyrics. The music isn’t anything special as far as indie rock goes, but the other two elements really sell the band for me. And I can’t help but wonder what kind of source material they’re using. Diaries? Letters? Something personal, obviously, since they’re not singing about things one would find in a history book or encyclopedia. They’ve really got a knack for creating their own poignant alternative folklore.

A great marriage of superb storytelling and catchy melodies. These guys clearly love three things: mothers, petticoats, and accordions. This is all so pleasant, from beginning to end, even when they’re singing about the ghost of a child who died as a newborn. And I’ve never heard anyone sing more beautifully about a graveyard. This music, rooted in old stories and images, is steeped in death and is therefore more alive, for you cannot know life until you understand the ever-present reality of death.

Twenty years on in their career and eschewing any major record labels, the band has gone independent and uses this double album to revisit all their styles, mainly folk rock and indie folk, but there are moments of pop and country here, too, to say nothing of the final track, a meditation on mortality and storytelling--using St. Joan of Arc as a focal point--that strays into post-rock and industrial territories. I gotta say, I love it when a band releases an album where the final track is the entire side of a vinyl disc!

Zany is the first word that comes to mind. The only word, really. And I dig zany. It’s mostly instrumental zaniness here, but when there are male vocals, they, too, are pretty zany. Side A bounces and hops. Side B pushes further, a more experimental and meandering sound, not bouncing in place on one leg. The gnomes take over.

's step-brother.

Just downright charming and cute!

When you stand at the edge of infinity, on the verge of a death caused by the smothering effects of heroin, the only music you hear is silence, and you realize that life is worth living, no matter how painful it is, for in it, music still plays. But how to come to grips with the reality of your violation except through escape into psychedelic visions? Yet even in the visions, flowers wither and die in the brutal sun amid a parched and cracked land. The innocent and the guilty suffer, the former ravished and the latter punished.

This album is the playful, folksy telling of the “story of a white-collar worker”, conceptualizing the worldwide popular uprisings of 1968 in which militaries and other elites responded by ramping up their political oppression. This album is about some random white-collar worker who decides to go out and riot with others.

De André's Epitaph Service
For the low price of €99.99, you can have Fabrizio De André sing your epitaph (though he doesn't promise it will be flattering). You can customize your epitaph with guitar, organ, or flute, and you can choose between rich, lovely female backing vocals or cool, whispered (and kinda creepy) male backing vocals! Act now, while supplies last!

A religious album by a professed atheist, this is an exploration of the lives of the Holy Family as told in various apocryphal accounts, with De André ending with a meditation on Jesus as being not so much God but a brother to the poor. Although I disagree with the interpretation of the content, the poetry of this concept album is beautifully rendered, and his voice is hypnotic.

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This short album includes two anonymous works of late-Medieval classical music and Renaissance classical music, and there's even a bit of 17th-century Spanish poetry sprinkled in. Sounding as if it was recorded inside the expansive acoustics of an old church, this music oscillates between the ancient and the modern, going from viols, bagpipes, and hurdy gurdies to keyboards and drum machines, but what remains is the signature atmospheric DCD sound. It'd be a mistake to compare this album to releases by classical musicians and conductors. That's not what this music is trying to do. It's putting its own DCD spin on classical and folk music, and it does it well.

“Suíte Casazul” aside, this album is a delightful blend of melodic vocals and experimental folk instrumentation.

Someone trying to shock a synthesizer back to life while a Frenchman talks to me (in French) and beats on the walls and tables with spoons. This is a serious operation, and all I can do is sit stunned in wonder at the mystery unfolding before me. When the caterwauling starts, I just kind of scoot my chair back. Then scattered applause nearby startles me, and I join in with strained, hunted smile.

And the day that dude's the Walrus....hell, that's the day I'm an astronaut!

A fun, high-energy album full of catchy tunes by three earnest, talented dudes. This recording stands out to me because it's not some generic worship album but rather something that is tackling sensitive issues in the social circles of dc Talk's listening audience: namely, race relations. They sing of reconciliation, not only on a spiritual level for personal shortcomings but also on a systemic, societal level. The open sincerity of this album astounds me, again as they tackle sensitive topics like the lure of fame and its potentially fatal effect on faith. And then there's the album's eponymous centerpiece, the oh-so cool "Jesus Freak" with all the manic energy of an Old Testament prophet. Basically, this album is honest. It's not all rainbows and unicorns in Jesusland, and He's not here to make you rich and take away all your problems.