RegnYouth ArchivesRegnYouth ArchivesThe RegnYouth Archives provides the reading audience with music related selections, reviews, and interviews, introducing new and upcoming artists and bring older, extraordinary artists back into the spotlight. Articles
Psapp - The Camel?s Back
2008-10-25 05:01:00 Psapp are a rare band, odd in lots of ways. They manage to keep the electronica cognoscenti amused with their intricate production and the pop crowd happy with their irresistible hooks. Their previous album Tiger, My Friend was a classic in its genre and firmly established them as a band to watch. It seems things took ... More About: Back , Camel , Psapp
Marnie Stern - This Is It & I Am It & You Are It & So Is That & He Is It &
2008-10-25 04:58:00 In the world of female-fronted rock, it stands to reason that there is is a great deal of territory to be explored in between Joanna Newsom and Le Tigre. Marnie Stern ’s greatest asset is her ability not to bridge the gap between the two, but to somehow encapsulate both all at once. Her second album, ...
The Secret Machines - The Secret Machines
2008-10-25 04:51:00 Secret Machines have always known how to make an entrance. On their 2004 debut, Now Here is Nowhere, they announced themselves with the explosive nine-minute First Wave Intact. The remainder of the album, though never as loud or forceful, was no less urgent, combining insistent kraut rock underpinnings with Brandon (Keyboard / bass) and Benjamin ... More About: The Secret , Secret
Shugo Tokumaru - Exit
2008-10-25 04:46:00 From the time his Japanese / US debut Night Piece began to receive rare but rave reviews in 2004 to his second album, L.S.T’s slightly more international 2006 release on New Zealand’s Lil Chief Records (The Brunettes, The Ruby Suns), Shugo Tokumaru has largely remained a mystery of sorts. Now, with his recent (and first ... More About: Pop
The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia
2008-10-23 00:05:00 Perhaps no duo makes more sense than Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan, as anyone who has seen or heard Lanegan with The Twilight Singers in the last few years can attest. But on a project that firmly belongs to both men, The Gutter Twins is a ghostly amalgamation that effortlessly melds their styles on Saturnalia, ...
Reefer - Reefer
2008-10-22 23:58:00 Nick Thorburn, of Islands and The Unicorns fame, has joined forces with hip-hop producer Daddy Kev on this side project, simply titled Reefer. The pair was originally introduced by avant-rapper Giovanni Marks (Subtitle) and the duo developed a close friendship over the past year in Los Angeles and Montreal. Traveling back and forth between the ... More About: Hip-hop
Destroyer - Trouble in Dreams
2008-10-22 23:53:00 Canadian off-beat singer-songwriter, Dan Bejar is better known for his involvement with indie rockers The New Pornographers. He also gets about a bit with other bands. But it’s with Destroyer - an ever-evolving, revolving door of a band formed in 1995 - that he’s expressed his most interesting music. Instant comparisons to David Bowie are understandable ... More About: Dreams
Margot and the Nuclear So and So?s: Animal! / Not Animal
2008-10-22 18:08:00 Something happened to the formerly happily cohabiting Nuclear So & So?s. The instruments in the mini-orchestra are frequently used in the service of tangential, discordant trumpet lines or grandiose proclamations in string ensemble; in either case the message is something about love (will tear us apart). Borrowing heavily on the guitar from Electioneering in I ... More About: Animal
Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping
2008-10-18 04:35:00 Of Montreal , aka Kevin Barnes, has been perverting US indie for more than ten years, with his mix of electronic psychedelia and 1980s funk-pop paving the way for the likes of MGMT. On his ninth album, he has shifted the focus back to his wicked side. In love with love again, he revisits Princelike lasciviousness ...
Arcade Fire: Canada?s Most Intriguing Indie
2008-10-18 03:49:00 In the first half of the ’00s, thanks to the Constantines, Unicorns and New Pornographers (to name a few), the international indie rock audience finally began to wake up to the long-thriving Canadian scene. In 2004, Arcade Fire became one of the most warmly received and widely celebrated Montreal acts in some time. Propping up ... More About: Canada , Indie , Arcade Fire
The Strokes - Is This It
2008-10-17 21:29:00 The Strokes are a mass of contradictions: Wealthy, artsy, good-looking upper class white kids embracing the New York City underbelly as a musical schtick, who play the game better than the real bands that have been sweating it out in the clubs in search of that golden record deal for years. Signed off the strength ... More About: Television , The Strokes
The Datsuns, Foals, & 30 More!
2008-10-17 06:47:00 The Datsuns return after a two year absence with Human Error, the opening single from Headstunts, and deliver exactly what fans would expect from the New Zealand quartet. Unhinged, raucous and electrifying live, the band’s reputation for outstanding performances is transferred perfectly onto their current studio work. Screaming guitars and pounding drums run un-apologetically throughout ... More About: Foals
The Rosebuds - Life Like
2008-10-17 06:00:00 The Rosebuds’ four-LP discography has been like a series of Rorschach tests: Which album is best depends on what perspective you apply. The duo’s 2003 debut Make Out remains a high watermark, since it has the simplest songs, the clearest production and the least lulls. Others champion the moodier variety of 2005’s Birds Make Good ... More About: Life , New Wave
Lambchop - OH (Ohio)
2008-10-17 05:50:00 Now ten albums and fourteen years into a stellar, but often-overlooked recording career, Kurt Wagner’s Lambchop could be forgiven for settling into their well-worn alt country groove and checking their idiosyncrasies at the door, ready for whatever passes as a Nashville retirement (hanging up your Stetson?). Luckily, the ever-rotating collective, whose formidable output is equaled ... More About: Ohio
Mr. Scruff - Ninja Tune
2008-10-17 05:39:00 Continuing the fishy theme of previous releases, Mr Scruff?s long-awaited follow-up to 2002?s Trouser Jazz uses a pescatorial pun on host label Ninja Tune as its title. That?s not the only familiar aspect either, with the cover featuring another of Scruff?s genially bulbous cartoons, and the music once more built predominantly around jazz samples. Test ...
Adventure - Adventure
2008-10-17 05:32:00 Technically speaking, Benny Boeldt, the Baltimore musician behind Adventure , isn’t a “chiptune” artist. Followers of that particular genre compose and perform their songs using vintage video-game chips, something Boeldt, who prefers Moog synths and MIDI sequencers, doesn’t do. Still, it’s impossible to hear Adventure’s self-titled debut without thinking back to the venerable 8-bit Nintendo system, a ... More About: Electronica
Los Campesinos! - We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
2008-10-15 04:50:00 For those yet unfamiliar with Los Campesinos !, the Cardiff-born 7-piece’s cocktail of synths, violins, and itchy guitars leap from the speakers to create indie jubilance, and what can only be described as perfect pop songs. No refined, coyness here - these rascals are face-slappingly brazen. Ways To Make It Through The Wall gets WAB, WAD ... More About: Beautiful , Indie , Doomed , Los Campesinos
Dead Confederate - Wrecking Ball
2008-10-15 04:41:00 Dead Confederate’s Wrecking Ball sounds like Bleach-era Nirvana covering My Morning Jacket . (That’s a good thing.) The Georgia band stirred up some buzz in January with its self-titled EP, a strained, aching redefinition of roots-rock that hinted at something bigger and better. Consider Wrecking Ball the fulfillment of that promise: Howling with impassioned anger about ... More About: Kurt Cobain , Dead
Megapuss - Surfing
2008-10-15 04:36:00 Devendra Banhart brings us a new musical project with Gregory Rogove (Priestbird/Devendra’s live band) and Fab Moretti (drummer of The Strokes) as well as Noah and the usual suspects in Devendra’s live ensemble called Megapuss. We have to question the naming of the bad and the reason to include Banhart and Rogove naked on the ... More About: Surfing , Folk
The Legendary Pink Dots - Plutonium Blonde
2008-10-15 04:29:00 In their 26-year career, the Legendary Pink Dots have tackled everything from sinister electro-pop to psychedelic jam to industrial rock to pure sound collage experimentalism. Their newest studio album incorporates a little of all of the above, but following in the footsteps of 2006’s Your Children Placate You from Premature Graves, it goes at things ... More About: Blonde
T.I. - Paper Trail
2008-10-12 16:18:00 Imagine the Spike Lee movie The 25th Hour. Only instead of Edward Norton as a pensive drug dealer on his last day before going to prison after getting caught with cocaine under his couch, it’s Clifford “Tip” Harris rapping and doing community service before a 12-month sentence after getting caught with army guns in a ... More About: Hip-hop , Paper , Trail
Eighty Singles For October
2008-10-06 06:14:00 After the popularity of Sixty Singles For September, we have returned with Eighty Singles For October . It seems last month offered plenty of new music to spin and October may even surpass September with several long-awaited releases coming out. New material from Deerhoof , Los Campesinos !, and Stars are compiled with stellar singles from recent releases ...
Dungen - 4
2008-10-06 05:08:00 Whereas most bands with disparate influences gradually merge them into a more consistent, unified sound, Dungen seem to be doing the opposite. Their artful, jazzy lounge-rock side is more pronounced than ever, with several tracks here showing great restraint and gorgeous arrangement: on Det Tar Tid they sound more than ever like Sweden?s answer to ...
Charlie Haden Family & Friends - Rambling Boy
2008-10-06 05:01:00 There was a time when family entertainment often consisted of coming together to sing and play; when music was not just an oral tradition but a means of engendering familial closeness. A time long past, it contrasts with the contemporary reality of disenfranchised children, in no small part the result of a society where double ... More About: Family , Friends , Rambling , Charlie
The Shaky Hands - Lunglight
2008-10-05 04:28:00 The Shaky Hands are five guys from Portland, Oregon, and they represent what currently seems to be the trend in that rainy Northwest city: Putting out music that is jangly, earthy, and freewheeling?earnest and rootsy at its greatest moments, a bit overplayed and distracting at its weaker ones, but forgivingly so. Adopting a tribalist sort ...
Pixies: ?80s Alt-Rock Gods
2008-10-05 04:19:00 As the rock underground slouched towards mainstream acceptance in the late-’80s ? well before the grungequake made such baby steps seem trivial ? the Pixies fired a much-needed salvo of strident aggression and willful nonconformity across the bow of left-field music. Although the quartet became the influential darlings of college radio, the Pixies proved to ... More About: Rock , Gods
Locksley - Don?t Make Me Wait
2008-10-04 17:18:00 Not musically innovative. Not sublimely unconventional. Just toe-tapping, head shaking, “throw your cares to the wind”, nostalgia-rock good times. Locksley’s debut, Don?t Make Me Wait , is 33 super-cool minutes of classic pop in the hands of hipster kitties (imagine the Strokes covering A Hard Day?s Night). Dancy, lyrical, and a tad too bouncy, it’s definitely ... More About: Britpop , The Strokes
Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue
2008-10-04 17:12:00 Following Under The Blacklight’s retro AOR sound which brought Fleetwood Mac?s classic period to mind, Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis has turned her attention back to her solo work and unleashes her Acid Tongue on this new release. It seems Lewis has turned back up on a dusty back road, dealing in the kind of gritty ...
Dar Williams - Promised Land
2008-10-04 17:04:00 Dar Williams is one of those fine, gifted singer-songwriters who should be much better known than they are, based on talent, variety and depth. In her case, too, one would have to add general entertainment value to the list; she rarely falls into the dour, humorless rut that can swallow up folk singers, a generally ... More About: Folk , Land
Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke
More articles from this author:2008-10-04 07:54:00 Bam! Kazam! Ladyhawke! A superhero for the noughties. Beamed direct to you from the ’80s. To be completely fair to Pip Brown - as little Miss Ladyhawke is better known to her friends and loved ones - in many ways this record sounds like it has less chance of working than a mortgage broker. Cat ... More About: New Zealand , New Wave , Stevie Nicks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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