AWmusic

Here are all the posts and reviews from the last week:

Jess reviewed American Dollar’s A Memory Stream for your weekly fix of post-rock.

Chad VanGaalen’s album Soft Airplane is awesome. Tons of feedback + disagreement for giving the album a 4.25 out of 5… Was I too harsh?

Coko profiled Cori Green a local R&B artist.

Matt covered The Dutchess and The Duke’s She’s the Dutchess and He’s The Duke. I love the photo he uses.

Josh reviews Eric Hutchinson’s popular Sounds Like This.

I reviewed Okkervil River’s The Stand Ins. A little bit of a miss but they are still one of my favorite bands.

Joe covers The Ready Set. Judging from his picture, they man could eat some more junk.

Adrian covered Scars on Broadway’s self titled release. For you System of A Down fans.

I reviewed the Stars’ Sad Robots EP. Solid little disc you can get on Itunes or on tour.

Lu reviews The Swear’s Hotel Rooms and Heart Attacks.

Christian covered The Verve’s Forth. People say a lot of great things about The Verve but outside of Bittersweet Symphony, I haven’t really heard many other songs.

Young Sensation’s Kitty Magic EP is a nice little EP.

Reminder: Metro Station contest ends next week!

Friend, Zack reviewed the Virgin Festival finally.

New around the blogosphere and such and such:
Jenny Lewis’ album was streaming on her myspace. Release date is Sept 23rd.. I can’t wait, I’m in love with her. To be honest I didn’t check out Rabbit Fur Coat since my ex said it sucked…she listens to Britney Spears now so I took some great advice! Snob’s Music (from Toronto) gave it a 5.5.

Metallica’s Death Magnetic hit stores with some good reviews. I still hate their stance on P2P etc. Hopefully one of our writers will pick this up (hint hint: Adrian).

Kanye West was arrested for “having issues” with the paparazzi. He also managed to post 10 posts during the same day *cough* ghost writers *cough* on his blog. Hot Biscuits burned Kanye West saying the only time he’s acceptable is when is not on a track and links to an instrumental track of Love Lockdown…hilarious.

Coldplay is somehow on the new guitarhero. Bands like Interpol long deserved to be on there but come on Coldplay… who really rocks on pretending to play a Coldplay riff*?

Captain Melody loves the new Emiliana Torrini album. I personally would take Lykke Li over her… maybe because Lykke Li is so hot (yes I’m shallow).

Coming on like a Led Zeppelin influenced rock school stipulation (with Portishead’s Third) on naming this year’s albums after their sequential number, the cleverly titled Forth suggests, as the word signifies, that the music on The Verve’s fourth album moves the sound of the band forward, with some momentum, from the their last, the over a decade old Urban Hymns. But instead of thrusting experimental jams full of the soaring psychedelic guitar and songs swelling with epic grandeur, as was anticipated in some quarters, Forth is full of underwhelming soft rock balladry delivered in a measured mid-tempo, meant for and made by the middle-aged. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if The Verve didn’t have more than the commercial and watered-down (in places) Urban Hymns under their belts and the band also didn’t have the gifted “one man Pink Floyd” guitarist, Nick McCabe.
Sure, The Verve have meandered and produced many elongated anthems before, but somehow, this time round, the protracted paeans of Richard Ashcroft and company have substituted the epic for a platform of plodding epic reflection.
It doesn’t help that Ashcroft’s lyrics with their meaningless existential generalities do little to give some weight of significance to the songs or that Nick McCabe’s sonic palette seems muted and held back by a production mix that reduces what is often the most interesting sound coming out of The Verve to the sound of distant and pretty echoes. Although, when Mcabe’s trippy chromatic guitar does swoop upfront into the mix (like in the ending coda of “Judas”) it can effectively save a song from being just another tepid mood piece propping up a potpourri of awkward lyrics. Likewise, the dub arrangement of “Numbness” creates an adequate amount of space for the band to hint at its instrumental abilities and “Noise Epic” kicks some much needed energy into the album, in the reminiscent velocity of The Verve’s former freak-out-jams. So all doesn’t seem to be lost.
But these rare moments of instrumental transcendence are fleeting when the majority of what constitutes this album is cleanly-produced, content-free and remarkably characterless, it’s almost as if Forth’s diluted soundscapes are documenting the disintegration of a once powerful ensemble as it dribbles out of focus. It’s probably best to listen to Forth without too many expectations, it contains a band blunted by Ashcroft’s lyrical follies and the efforts of a group reduced to producing an assortment of attractive but ultimately unexciting background noises in an attempt to animate its singer’s abilities, beyond the deadening downward spiral of a solo career. For all the signification of its numeral significance, Forth’s shallow and colourless bluster illustrates that (for some) a decade between albums can be too long.

The Verve – Judas
The Verve – Noise Epic