Recently in Album Category

Year Zero is good on so many levels I barely know where to begin. As an album it is solid. When With-a Teeth-ah! came out, I complained that it was a decent album, but not really a progression of the NIN sound. Year Zero sounds like nothing you've heard before. In many ways it is the anti-Downward Spiral. Where that album was the very inward-looking story of someone falling apart personally, YZ is ...

So yesterday I mentioned the flaws in Radiohead's online release plan and wished they'd just do it right. Well, someone did, and that someone was Saul Williams, whom I have praised before on this site and on the destruct/hour. In this new model, you either pay nothing for a decent-quality version of the full album, or you pay $5 for a version of the album in any quality you like, including lossle ...

Forgive me for missing the controversy by several months, but it's near impossible to talk about the revolution in the way music is being distributed and paid for without bringing up In Rainbows, the stellar Radiohead album that was released, as everyone knows, via digital distribution, where the customer paid whatever they wished for the download- down to and including nothing at all. My origin ...

I've got a funny old relationship with music. On the one hand I can't live without it, listen to it constantly, get untold amounts of energy and inspiration and enjoyment out of it, and some of my happiest moments are dancing at live gigs. On the other hand...I hate most music. Most music sucks ass. It's a taint, a blight on the audioscape of my surroundings. I can't escape it. It brings me down, ...

Er, it's going to be kind of tough to review this album, because I have so little to say about it. 'Audio wallpaper' would be the best way I can describe it. There's nothing actually objectionable or unlistenable here, but I've heard the damned thing dozens of times and I can't remember anything about it. I can remember 'The Power of Orange Knickers', but that's only because it has such an annoyi ...

A while ago, when I was at the younger end of the teenage spectrum, I used to fantasize about a band that would release an album that would be 'cross-genre'. As in, they'd do a rap track, then a heavy metal track, then an easy-listening track, then an opera track, then an instrumental, and so on. I used to think to myself: "If I'm ever in a band, that's what I'd do." Gorillaz isn't that band, a ...

So, I ordered the new Gorillaz album, because I liked the single. I could have downloaded it and not paid, but I like to financially support artists that do good stuff. So I get the CD yesterday and pop it into my computer. Nothing. Computer doesn't even register that there's a CD in the drive. I chalk it up to the fact that I have a lousy computer at home, but it's mildly annoying. Get to work ...

"You looked like you enjoyed that then." "Yeah, yeah I did, they were good stuff. Wouldn't buy their album, though. And I think I've figured out why I almost never buy albums." "What, just now?" "Yeah, just while I was dancing." "Why's that then?" "Well, I was dancing and thinking how good these guys were, but I realized they were a bit, ah, what Scott just referred to as 'meat & two veg', li ...

I was at the beach over Christmas and had 'Atomic Bomb' on repeat pretty much constantly, so I got to know it pretty well, and think it's pretty damned excellent. ...