Album Reviews
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Chrash — ‘Music for the Next Scene’
In a recent email from Chris Bernat, guitarist and vocalist for Quad Cities band Chrash, said, “We are all very pleased with the cover shot featuring a big shiner on my right eye.” The week the band was scheduled to do the photoshoot for the album artwork for their latest album, Bernat had a pretty […]
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Album Review: AGED & Malik Grey — ‘Ferment & Rot’
ferment & rot promo medley by aged By the time “Reactivated,” the first track on Ferment & Rot by Des Moines-based producer AGED and Georgia rapper Malik Grey, is over, you will only have a vague sense of what awaits you for the remainder of the 20-minute project. The production starts out with lo-fi bass […]
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Album Review: Fishbait — ‘Fishbait’
For many, fishing brings to mind a whole lot of casting, sitting and waiting — a favorite of grandpas and teenagers alike. But for Fishbait, fishing is gnarly, bloody, sewage-filled and above all, slimy. That’s the general message of their self-titled (and fittingly fish-themed) debut album: Bodies of water, whether bathtub or ocean, are forces […]
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Album Review: Jim Swim — ‘Unruly Automatons’ EP
Unruly Automatons by Jim Swim I thought I knew what I was getting into when I started up “Creature,” the first track on Jim’s Swim’s Unruly Automatons. Keyboard chords stutter as if a DJ is warming up a crab scratch. A drum loop kicks in that would feel at home in a Metal Fingers Special […]
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Album Review: Big Begonias — ‘In Bloom’
Gabrielle Kouri’s tune-wrangling—her quirky lyrics and distinctive compositions—have long been long admired in Eastern Iowa folk music circles.
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Album Review: Dope Walker — ‘Heavy Revelations’
Heavy Revelations by Dope Walker The lineup of Dope Walker is an unlikely cross-section of members from Minnesota and Iowa: Aaron “Lazerbeak” Mader from the Twin Cities hip-hop collective Doomtree; Lee County, Iowa folk mainstay William Elliot Whitmore; Mike Schulte from Iowa juggernaut The Pork Tornadoes; Joel Anderson from ft (The Shadow Government); Jeff Allen, […]
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Album Review: Keenan Crow — ‘Ambient Anachronism’ EP
Ambient Anachronisms by Keenan Crow Ambient Anachronism is the first solo EP by Des Moines-based musician and activist Keenan Crow, perhaps best known as the director of policy and advocacy at One Iowa, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization. In other words, you can assume Crow has a front-row seat to the special kind of buffoonery […]
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Album Review: Run Dog — ‘The Big Room EP’
The Big Room by Run Dog Joel Sires slides into my DMs, “You gotta check this band out. Run Dog from CF. Unreal. So fully realized.” High praise from someone I consider to be one of Eastern Iowa’s great songwriters. I wasted no time checking out the quartet, who released their debut four-song EP The […]
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Album Review: Anthony Worden and the Illiterati — ‘Plain Angels’
Plain Angels by Anthony Worden Anthony Worden makes music that an archivist of 20th century music would make. His early albums were heavily influenced by the Velvet Underground. Since then, he’s branched out. On Plain Angels, he writes songs as winsome and pleasing to the ear as Badfinger and Matthew Sweet. The album title itself […]
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Album Review: Stephanie Catlett — ‘Face the Terrain’
Face the Terrain by Stephanie Catlett Being tasked to write an album review can be fraught with emotions, but the opening slide guitar of Stephanie Catlett’s new EP, Face the Terrain, sold me immediately. The warm tones of the opening track are beautiful and evoke all of the ’70s-by-way-of-the-’90s alt country/indie I loved in college. […]
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Album Review: Swampland Jewels — ‘Swampland Jewels’
The Swampland Jewels by The Swampland Jewels Swampland Jewels, led by Iowa City music veteran Nate Basinger, is a band that’s found its niche, combining music from Louisiana’s musical tradition with a mélange of jazz, country and roots rock. The Jewels also represent the hard-to-define terroir of Iowa music, a “why not?” sense of musical […]
