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Vampire Weekend Review Royale: Modern Vampires of the City

15 May

Vampire Weekend
Modern Vampires of the City
Vampire Weekend, album cover art, Modern Vampires of the City

Three albums into their career, Vampire Weekend has only progressively gotten better at their craft. In 2008 they released their self-titled debut, which proved to be a cerebrally focused pop-punk album that was a half hour of smart, heavily influenced fun. In the 2010 release Contra, the lyrics only increasingly became more clever, and the music became more layered and complex. Now enter Modern Vampires of the City, where that tack-sharp wit has only seemed to have gotten sharper once again, and their music still remains fresh. The formula is still there. It’s still a concise forty minute album that is chock-full of iconic and modern pop references as well as heavy influences from the likes of not only the usual comparisons of Paul Simon and The Clash, but even some Dick Dale and Buddy Holly. Bundle all this up with Vampire Weekend’s own unique form of jangly baroque-pop music with a bit of a punk-ass attitude and you have Modern Vampires of the City. They truly have become a unique staple to modern music, and one of the more intelligent bands of recent years.
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Heavy Deeds Review: Light Lunch EP

14 May

Heavy Deeds

Light Lunch EP

light lunch

We get quite a few emails from bands and promoters of bands informing us of lower-profile releases.  Sometimes these emails are just to inform, but often they are solicitations of sorts to see if we will review an album or EP.  Often, we just ignore them, but every once in awhile, one of us will go through the stack and see if there is anything worthwhile to write about, or even just add to our iTunes library.  So, when I opened the email to check out Minneapolis-based coast-rock band Heavy Deeds, my mind was open, but expectations were not soaring.  I am happy to report, Heavy Deeds debut EP Light Lunch(officially released today) has been in heavy rotation on my iPod for about a week.
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LxListening: Rapid Fire Album Reviews

8 May

charlie xcx, baths, ghost face killah, savages, deerhunter, new album, review, new music, 2013

With the barrage of great music 2013 has offered up thus far, we at LxL are struggling to keep up with everything we feel we should be touching on. Enter our first mid-week entry of LxListening, and a new concept behind it: Rapid Fire Album Reviews. Granted, all of the albums listed below should be warranted their own full review, but three men at one post a day can only accomplish so much. So here we are in an effort to try and not let some of this springs most dominant releases slip through the cracks. If you haven’t already heard these, I urge you to give the following albums a listen:

 

Savages – Silence Yourself
Savages, album cover, Silence Yourself
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The Knife Review: Shaking The Habitual

7 May

The Knife

Shaking the Habitual

shaking the habitual

Sometimes one of my favorite artists pisses me off so much, I have to wait awhile to even talk about it.  I don’t want to be overly hyperbolic and just rip them apart without sitting on my feelings for awhile.  So, even though The Knife’s Shaking The Habitual came out weeks ago, I am now ready to properly evaluate it, devoid of my initial reactionary response.  Boy am I glad I waited.
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Iron & Wine Review: Ghost on Ghost

1 May

Iron & Wine

Ghost On Ghost

Iron and Wine Ghost on Ghost album cover art

Carolina-born former art school professor Sam Beam aka Iron & Wine started his music career over a decade ago making whispery Southern bedroom folk for all to enjoy being pegged as the modern-day Nick Drake, but since his first few albums, Beam has shape-shifted as well as any modern musician tagged with a label. On 2005’s Woman King EP, Beam picked up the pace a bit with a frantic bluegrass spirit that held it all together. The Shephard’s Dog followed, which I still believe to be his masterpiece, went in an astounding range of musical directions, from muddy blues to dub reggae to romantic calypso all held together by Beam’s beautiful voice and songwriting. Finally his last album, Kiss Each Other Clean found Beam turned from Nick Drake to Steely Dan: a polished, jazz-influenced soft rock sound that worked surprisingly well with his voice. Now, his latest, Ghost On Ghost, picks up where Kiss Each Other Clean left off but here, Beam takes the soft-rock smooth jazz sound to a new extreme which unfortunately smooths out some of the rough lo-fi edges that made his music so interesting in the first place.
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