The Wake

Something has been keeping me awake for days. Insomnia? Methamphetamines? No. It is The Go! Team’s new album, Proof of Youth. Like their past album, the newest release is chocked full of what I like to call “Go!-ness” Imagine a high school marching band combined with rapping, cheering, and breakneck electronica, and you have something close to The Go! Team’s style. Proof of Youth is like pure energy. Play it on a lazy afternoon, and by the second song you’ll be off the couch and running a marathon. I was in the middle of the album as I jogged around Dinkytown the other day, and I ended up saving a puppy, kicking a field goal, and hitting a homerun, all while mentally writing this review.As hard as …

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Sky Blue Sky

The kings of America’s alternative music scene are back. Often heralded as the state’s only answer to Radiohead, these six fellas from Chicago had grown increasingly loud and experimental on their last two studio albums. Both albums, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, were met with the loudest of critical acclaim and fan adoration. Then with the 2005’s live release, Kicking Television, Wilco proved themselves an onstage juggernaut, popping eardrums and blowing indie minds nationwide. On Sky Blue Sky, the band is taking a step back; re-embracing their alt-country roots and often electing to turn down their amps, even if only a notch or two. The album numbers 12 in pristinely crafted, jammed-out, traditional stLiterary meet …

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Panda Bear - Person Pitch

Panda Bear, whose real name is Noah Lennox, recently lost his father. The result was Young Prayer an album of soft clapping and wailing mourning, as he fights through his loss with music. “Where are you?” are some of the only discernable words, but if you listen closely, you can put together the phrase, “This is how I’ll talk to you.” The result is an album that is like dark magic, a musical limbo and oddly soothing sound of the living communicating with the dead.His sophomore album, Person Pitch is a gentler branch off of the freak-alt-folk sound of his larger band, Animal Collective. With songs like “Leaf House,” which sounds like someone …

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Matt Jennings, sibling of acclaimed singer/songwriter Mason Jennings, moved from Pittsburgh to Minneapolis in high school to play in his brother’s band. His stint as the bassist, and then drummer, didn’t last long. He opted instead to go back to school; upon graduation, he found himself traveling the world. He studied Spanish in Mexico, and then spent some time teaching English in South China and Thailand. When he returned home, he assembled a band and self-released his debut, Two Become One, in the summer of 2005. Having spent time playing in the different areas of his travel, Jennings’ guitar playing is a fusion of several different styles and cultures. The percussive strumming of opener, “The Tortoise and the Hare,” alludes to images of two combating lover as his tango cadence intertwines with long stretches of …

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Elvis Perkins grew up surrounded by fame and suffering. This 32-year-old singer- songwriter lost his father, Tony Perkins (most famous for his role as Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s Psycho), to AIDS in 1992. It was a very public, controversial death due to the homosexual pretenses of his affliction. Elvis’s mother, Berry Berenson, was on American Airlines Flight 11 when it was hijacked and flown in to the one of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. His new album, Ash Wednesday, released on its namesake has been in the works since 2002. It’s a mix of songs written before and after his mother’s death, and is ordered chronologically as thus. Overbearing themes are a sometimes coated, often times proclaimed, sullenness and a search for explanations and meaning. The disc opener, “While You Were Sleeping,” is …

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Duplicating the success of a heralded first album is a task unrivaled in difficulty. Bloc Party, a foursome out of England, set the bar high with their 2005 release, Silent Alarm, an album that led to frequent comparisons to dance rock predecessors like Gang of Four and Joy Division. They are now stepping up to the plate with their second album, A Weekend in the City.The opener, “Song for Clay (Disappear Here),” starts quietly. Singer Kele Okereke relays the thoughts of his troubled mind over strummed guitar and mounting strings. Unfortunately, the guitar riff is second rate, and fails to recreate the urgency of their last opener, “Like Eating Glass.” It is thankfully aided by some chirpy background vocals, overtaken by the resurgent deep baritone of Okereke’s voice, but lacks the catchy choruses and soul-stirring …

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Taking a history class? Has your professor just unloaded a monster reading assignment? Well, my friends To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie have the cure for your homework ills: Retire Early EP by this Richmond, VA, duo is stuffed to the gills with image conjuring sounds sure to make your assignment a far more imaginative read. Like experimental, ambience rockers Massive Attack and Portishead before them, they’ve captured a mood conducive to thinking nostalgically upon times far more romantic and violent than those we may be currently stumbling through. The group’s name was drawn from an era of French history. “The name grew gradually from our desire to leave behind that stigma of societal expectation, and become who we are today,” explain band members, comprised of Mark McGee and Jehna Wilhelm. They feel that the Retire …

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This Liverpool quartet began playing nine years ago. Visitations is their fourth album, but it’s a fresh start in the direction of absolute gold. They released their debut album in 2000, titled Internal Wrangler which landed them a tour with Radiohead. In 2002 they came out with Walking With Thee, and then in ’04 with Winchester Cathedral, a gloom and doom record teetering on the edge of scary. On the other hand, Visitations has plenty of mood setters, and some of their most optimistic lyrics to date. Album opener, “Family,” features fuzz to the guitars and bounce to the vocals and drums. “Animal/Human,” to which no comparisons can be drawn is far from familiar. One wearied voice begins the song, it is joined by another, the beats drop out, snaps come in, twitchy funk riffs …

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The 3rd album from this Portland based quartet is a step in several new directions, and several steps in the direction of pop sensible brilliance. Wincing the Night Away will leave you prone to a great deal of smiling and swaying from side to side. With the 2001 release of Oh, Inverted World, the Shins enjoyed some notoriety and critical appreciation. Two years down the road, the Shins released an intriguing blend of ’60 pop rock and folky country entitled Chutes Too Narrow. In 2004, with the movie Garden State they really hit it big, attracting new audiences they never could’ve expected. With two songs off their first album on the successful soundtrack and a healthy portion of on-screen dialogue devoted to their praising (done so by the average guy’s goddess, Natalie “I …

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This compilation from the University of Minnesota’s very own radio station, Radio K, is all across the board. It’s a fine indication of just how lucky we are here in the blessed cities of twin, as it features many hometown favorites. We’ve got it all and we’ve got it in quality proportions. Every genre is represented here, even those you’d least suspect. There are a couple of really cool electronica-type songs on the album. The first being by Digitata, called “Digitata 4 Ever.” Though I prefer one of their other songs, “Bangin’ Jessica Alba,” a bit more, it’s tough to argue with either. Another danceable track by a female fronted outfit is “Dead Disco” by Metric. Front woman of Metric, Emily Haines, is not the only Canadian on the disc as The Most Serene Republic …

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Type “Matt and Kim” into Google, and an ultrasound picture taken in June of 2005 of Kim’s then-unborn baby pops up, next to an image of Matt drenched in what looks like blood. Type “Matt and Kim” into YouTube, and a possible explanation appears. (For the “blood,” not the baby.) In the video for “Yea Yeah,” the third song on their self-titled, 10-track album, keyboardist/singer Matt and drummer Kim wear white shirts in an all white kitchen. As Matt relays a chorus of “Yea yeahs,” Kim bounces to the infectious beat, and tomatoes, spaghetti, pizza, bananas, ketchup, and other edibles pop up in small boxes below. After they appear, each food is launched at one of the pair, until both are dripping in spaghetti sauce and condiments. And later, attacked by friends dressed in fruit …

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Clever lyrics, engaging motifs and acoustic sound are just three elements that Jake Dilley’s The Color Pharmacy has to offer. The one-man-band incorporates as many as 101 instruments in one song, and never fewer than 20 throughout the CD, according to Anna Wiegenstein, reporter for The Daily.Iowan. The CD is just one half of Dilley’s creation. The music was made to complement the original “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” to which Dilley performs live in front of three large screens that broadcast scenes from the movie. Each note specifically enhances the actions that occur in the movie, from the plucking of hair to the bursting of bubbles. The music is heavily reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” to which Dilley attributes most of his inspiration.The Color Pharmacy is dark, moody and …

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When I first got this CD, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. “Is this a Christian album?” I asked my friend. It had all the signs: the word “Pray” was in the title, the artist is shown on the cover in a standard, “I’m standing on the shores of some water with my arms opened up towards the sky” pose, and there were songs with titles like, “Heaven Knows” and “I Will Wait.” After listening to this record several times through, I’m only about 95 percent sure it’s a religious album, but I’m 100 percent sure that it sucks. Nothing could have prepared me for these alarmingly horrendous lyrics, whimpering vocals, and Bible-camp counselor guitar playing. It takes less than 30 seconds into the album, on the title track “Hopin’ and Prayin,’” for Damico …

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The new 31 Knots five-song disc was a journey unlike any I had taken before. The tone starts dreary, as “Sounding Off Uncertainty” casts you into the depths of some dark, untreadable water. You hear a deep bellow, as if from a creature you cannot name. A weary chorus quickly follows, seeming to send out a warning. It’s a chilling blend. The noise drops out once, and then gives way to an eerie machine-like drone. It comes in and out of focus, as if you’re fighting to stay on the surface. Only 49 seconds into 31 Knots’ EP: Polemics, and it’s all you can do to try to stay alive. This Portland band bounces from genre to genre on its newest release, never content to stay in one spot. “Sedition’s Wish” starts out far more …

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Departing from the cynical and oft-political sentiments found with her synth-riff and cross-genre band, Metric front woman and Broken Social Scene/Stars collaborator Emily Haines (together with a collection of musicians she calls The Soft Skeleton) has released a collection of tracks written between 2002 and 2006, under the title “Knives Don’t Have Your Back”. It’s hard for anyone to outdo current successes by releasing previously-made material, and Haines, unfortunately, hasn’t proven to be an exception. She has, however, made a few of the bigger alt-crowd hits in the last few years, so Knives shouldn’t be immediately dismissed. The first three tracks on Knives start with a D on the piano, an instrument that inundates each track on the record. “Our Hell” opens the emotional gates with some of the best songwriting on Knives. We can …

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