Background Impressions of June 26, 2012 Releases

A Place To Bury Strangers – Worship

2 of 5 stars

It started to grow on me by the last song, but it didn’t really grab me.

Beachwood Sparks – The Tarnished Gold

4 of 5 stars

Soothing lead vox, front-porch harmony, sailing slide guitar, ethereal keys, and perfectly twangy electric guitars over a core groove from the bass, drums, and acoustic guitar rhythm section made it so I didn’t want it to end.

Blues Traveler – Suzie Cracks The Whip

3 of 5 stars

Some good grooves for what would surely be extended jams live with always impressive harmonica playing.

Chris Cagle – Back In The Saddle

1 of 5 stars

The most horrid kind of exploitation of the culture of the American South that I’ve heard in some time set over late 80s hard rock with just enough steel and fiddle to call it “Country” and a voice heavily stylized in a failed attempt to cover it’s natural poor quality. Normally, I prefer to abide by “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all,” but I’m making an exception for this album. This album is the embodiment of all that is wrong with modern pop-country. The only redeeming quality is the skill of the session musicians.

Julian Cope – Psychedelic Revolution

3 of 5 stars

Irreverent, dissonant, confident music that sounds like it was recorded in the late 1960’s.

The dB’s – Falling Off The Sky

3 of 5 stars

Solid, catchy tunes built on a bit of a psychedelic-blues-rock foundation.

Diiv – Oshin

4 of 5 stars

Terrific attention to detail. Every new layer is exactly what’s needed and no more. This record has a wonderful groove that makes it easy to lose yourself into the music.

A New Era

I’ve decided to begin a more purposed blog here. I have always been an opinionated, detail-oriented musician and listener, so it just makes sense to begin discussing music here instead of anything else.

I will start with what I call background impressions: quick reviews of a handful of this weeks releases based on a single listen while at work. I will try to keep each to a sentence or two and a 1–5 star rating. I will try to do these on a Tuesday as often as I can.

If there is a new release I feel deserves a more in-depth review, I will post this separately. These will only be for albums that are a 4 or 5 star album.

In addition to new releases, I intend to post on concerts I attend and albums I have owned for a while. I may expand the content as I see other opportunities to opine, but I think this should make a good start.