Daniel G. Harmann‘s Our Arms has been kicking around my iTunes far too long without a review. I sat down to listen to it so I could review it, and I realized that I’ve already been listening to it. The three songs on this EP have been through my shuffle, at the end of...
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Adam Rich‘s You Can’t Escape Life is a unique amalgam of punk, metal, pop and rock. It’s not specifically any of these genres; it takes ideas and moods from each genre and sticks them in the others. At its best the album unleashes some really unique and interesting songwriting; at it’s worst, it’s still...
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I’ve been reading reviews of Regina Spektor’s far with some confusion. Many of them say that it is not her best work because it’s less experimental and more “normal.” Then I read an essay by David Hajdu in which he asserts that Jack White is beloved because he never really finishes songs. These together...
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The eighties killed psychedelic music. The electronic sounds, materialistic excess, and posturing of the lost era of good music put the screws to trippy sounds. There hasn’t been a real resurgence of the signature sound of the sixties and seventies since. There have been scattered bands here and there, but the closest thing to...
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I am incredibly picky when it comes to Christmas music. I’m averse to sap and schmaltz in general, so that lends itself to a general skepticism of all things Christmas-related, not just music. But when good Christmas things come around, I enjoy them as much (if not more than) everyone else. Charlie Brown Christmas,...
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I am twenty-one years old, but the Gettin’ Funky with the Sugar Free Allstars DVD definitely made me feel twenty-one years young. And while it is meant for kids, I must admit that I highly enjoyed this live performance, recorded by the Oklahoman Sugar Free Allstars at the City Arts Center in Oklahoma City....
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Brutal honesty moment from the critic: looks matter. If you’ve got a cool name, cool art, or a cool one-sheet, I’m going to be much more likely to listen to your album than not. It’s simply a feature of listening to so much music. If you’ve got a stack of thirty albums, all of...
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I often wonder how artists title things. It’s become a little less of a mystery since I started writing my own albums, but I’m still boggled sometimes. Jacob Magers’ EP Pendulums is named after not only the least entertaining song on his EP, but the only one that relies on a gimmick. See, Jacob...
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Carl Hauck is a folksy singer who sounds like Andrew Bird if Andrew Bird knew how to have emotions. All of Bird’s work suffers from a disaffected whimsy; it seems that Bird takes bemusement from everything he’s singing and writing about, but does not actually engage with it. Thankfully, Carl Hauck takes the best...
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Sometimes real life gets in the way of things we want to get done. This is what has happened. I’m about to graduate college (hallelujah!) and I’m frantically finishing up everything. This has let IC go downhill a bit. But it’s only twelve days until college is no more, and time returns. With that,...
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