Reviews por vous...

Glad my limited learning in french came in handy somehow. I should've known that learning french (kind of) would only be useful for smart-alek titles and reading the back of cereal boxes.

Here's some recent reviews of music I've been listening to:

Zozobra
Harmonic Tremors

Not quite a cobra, not quite a zombie, Zozobra is named after a fictitious bogeyman set on fire every year in Santa Fe. Like this hideous monster, the band’s first release Harmonic Tremors comes alive through a frightening patchwork of metal, hardcore and noxiously good sludge. Sharing members of Cave In and Old Man Gloom, the band spews menacingly thick guitar drones that ooze more toxin than Du Pont into a small town’s water supply. On Levitate, distant tom fills stomp through a black cesspool of guitar drones like the personal soundtrack for the Swamp Thing. Likewise, on Silver Ghost, singer and bassist Caleb Scoffield furiously howls as the song completely breaks down around him, leaving only a brittle pulse of feedback that echoes off tin can walls. Ironically, don’t go hunting for harmony on Harmonic Tremors because it doesn’t live here, but if heavy slabs of wet-dirt riffs are your thing, look no further.

Dolorean
You Can’t Win

An organ breaks the silence, a piano coldly chimes and someone chants “you can’t win” over and over. The balance between despair and hope is delicate, and it’s the crux Dolorean deftly explores on their third release, “You Can’t Win.” Vocalist Al James digs into the psyche of paycheck-to-paycheck labourers, mining out the helpless and powerful truth of their circumstances. With Holy Sons’ guitarist Emil Amos in tow, Dolorean paints dustbowl landscapes with a restrained acoustic backdrop, distantly plaintive vocals and plenty of space for the songs to exhale. On Beachcomber Blues, James sings “I let the rising tide rinse off this dead end hotel haze” while Amos plucks through solemn minor chords. As the album closes, the tempo picks up and by the time “One Bottle Can Do” ends, Dolorean lifts itself above a sepia-soaked veil of emotional turmoil to find something more resolute, an optimism grounded in the everyman’s will for hard luck survival.

The Postmarks
s/t

If music were clothes, the Postmarks would be a slightly oversized maroon turtleneck. Approachable, yet sophisticated, The Postmarks’ debut is a nuanced blend of baroque-touched pop that’s both classy and wistful. Chanteuse Tim Yehezkely doesn’t sing so much as whisper in a small, sweet voice that sounds as though it was caught in a perpetual daydream. Multi-instrumentalists Christopher Moll and Jonathan Wilkins provide lovingly crafted backdrops that have one foot in cool French lounge and the other in Brian Wilson’s mini-concertos. While the lyrics sometimes stumble into precociousness as Yehezkely stretches her metaphors to match the album’s weather-tinged theme, she’s saved by the subtle touches of theremin, clarinets, flutes and violas in the musical accompaniment. On “Watercolour” Yehezkely’s breathy vocals, “paint my heart black and blue, in the portrait you said you’d do” come together perfectly with the stinging sincerity of a melancholy vibraphone to give this album its swooning heart. Airy, yet warm, this debut is perfect for a cloudy day.