Weighing in at five tracks and 18 minutes, In It With You, the newest EP from Iowa artist Jim Swim, is difficult to pigeonhole in terms of genre. If pressed, I would describe it as a blend of hip hop, Nick Drake bootlegs, a book of poems by Rumi and a cold Arnold Palmer spiked with a little bit of whiskey.
Album Reviews
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Album Review: Thomas Comerford — Blood Moon
The songs that make up Thomas Comerford’s new album, Blood Moon, weren’t necessarily planned to be an album. His goal following his 2014 album, II, was just to keep writing and recording songs at every opportunity without the pressure of a formal album release. He took the chance to work with Chicago acts such as Tatsu Aoki of experimental jazz group Miyumi Project, Panoramic & True, vocalist Amalea Tshilds and singer/pianist Azita Youssefi among others. Last summer he realized that he had a collection of songs that made sense as an album release.
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Album Review: Mock Identity — Paradise
For many eastern Iowans, your foot in the door to Mock Identity, a new band formed just last winter, is bassist Joshua David Hoffman, formerly of Supersonic Piss, which bowed out of the Iowa City scene in 2013. The band’s farewell blog entry, posted just under five years ago, indicated that Hoffman was off to new endeavors in D.C. — there, he built the connections that led to this new act’s formation, and resulted in Paradise, a debut that is more than Iowa City fans could have hoped for.
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Album Review: Byrn Paul — Dual Wielder
If you are a fan of guitar virtuosity, don’t bother reading the rest of this review; just go buy this album. Byrn Paul has put in the hours of practice to become a master of the instrument. There’s nothing left out of Dual Wielder because it was too hard to play. If you’re a fan of math rock and the viola da gamba — and who isn’t? — this is the only album you can buy this year that scratches that itch.
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Album Review: The Lost Tracks — Capitanos
Iowa City band the Lost Tracks is on the cusp of a period of big creative output. Their new album, ‘Capitanos,’ is the first of three releases coming out just this year.
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Album Review: Lissie — Castles
Lissie’s 2016 album “My Wild West” centered around being homesick for the Midwest. But now that she’s living here in northeast Iowa on her own “40 acres in the sun” (to quote that album’s “Hero”), she’s apparently having boyfriend issues on her latest, “Castles.”
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Album Review: Piss Exorcist — Piss Exorcist
From the depths of the Eastern Iowa punk scene comes Piss Exorcist’s self-titled album, released this past February. The Piss Exorcist identifications on Bandcamp range from hardcore punk to thrash music, but their Facebook claims they produce “punk bullshit,” which couldn’t be a more fitting classification in the most favorable sense.
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Album Review: Precious — He Has Abandoned Us
Precious is Cedar Falls’ Oliver Weilein, and “He Has Abandoned Us” is a concept album based around the story of a man (of unspecified historic time) who loses his family to the plague and retires to an abandoned temple to beseech God, who never answers him.
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Album Review: Koplant No — Elker
The opening track “Before We Go” on the reunited Koplant No’s new album “Elker” is a compound of skittering synth decay and dripping percussion flitting around a lone trumpet carrying a mournful melody. It’s a track that would fit perfectly on a Jack Lion record — which seems obvious when you consider that fellow Iowa City group Jack Lion shares Brian Lewis Smith on trumpet and Drew Morton on bass.
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Album Review: Dizzy Bridges — Speakerphobe on Speakerphone
Hearing a tune like “Variations on a Heartbeat” is a bit like visiting an old friend. It’s the kind of skillfully addictive pop tune that has you singing along by the second listen. But for Dizzy Bridges, the solo project of Iowa City musician SJ Gonzales, that isn’t enough.
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Album Review: Texas Hold’Em Lava Dome — Martial Law in Garrison Oaks
Texas Hold’Em Lava Dome consists of a “Venn Diagram of brothers and physics grad school classmates” who use their scientific knowledge of sound and space to launch the listener into another world.
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Album Review: The Cherry Tops — <3 <3 <3
The Cherry Tops, on their debut disc, “<3 <3 <3," which dropped last year, have a delightfully unapologetic early ’60s vibe, fast and funny and full of joy.
