Album Reviews Archives | Little Village

Album Review: Thomas Comerford — Blood Moon

Posted on Jun 20, 2018 by Michael Roeder

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. […]

Album Review: Mock Identity — Paradise

Posted on Jun 19, 2018 by Genevieve Trainor

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. […]

Album Review: Lissie — Castles

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Michael Roeder

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.” […]

Album Review: Piss Exorcist — Piss Exorcist

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Rachel Fotheringham

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. […]

Album Review: Precious — He Has Abandoned Us

Posted on May 2, 2018 by Kent Williams

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.
[…]

Album Review: Koplant No — Elker

Posted on May 2, 2018 by Michael Roeder

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.
[…]

Album Review: Dustin Matos — Layers

Posted on Mar 6, 2018 by Genevieve Trainor

“Layers” is storytelling symphonic rock at its best. There’s an epic, synth-y feel that could set it as the soundtrack to an ’80s fantasy film — but the narrative is more concise. These aren’t the kind of instrumental tracks that exist to travel alongside someone else’s story. They’re self-contained tales.
[…]

Album Review: Homogenized Terrestrials — Suspension

Posted on Mar 6, 2018 by Kent Williams

Phillip Klampe is a veteran of the dark ambient scene, self-releasing his first cassettes in the mid-1990s. His nom de ambient is Homogenized Terrestrials, which is a nod to his similarly long career as a grocery store dairy department manager. […]

Elite 8: The top albums of 2017

Posted on Dec 5, 2017 by Andre Perry

Here is another year of albums to consider. It’s silly to rank music at all and also fun in that it ignites passionate conversations about the art that has moved us (for better or worse) in the last year. Please accept this list as an invitation to hear something new, and introduce us to something new by sending your own list of wonderful musical moments — albums, songs, shows, etc. — from 2017. […]

Album Review: Har-di-Har — we will will you

Posted on Oct 17, 2017 by Michael Roeder

‘we will will you’ isn’t about Julie and Andrew Thoreen’s separation as couple and band but rather the subtly uncharted part where they consider coming back from it. The band goes on to describe the album as a record that “invites us into the process of re-commitment.” […]

Album Review: Illinois John Fever — Out Here Nobody Knows

Posted on Oct 17, 2017 by Kent Williams

Illinois John Fever are a country blues band with a backyard party vibe; they lock into steady grooves made more exciting by the occasional moments where they drop time.
[…]

Album Review: The Host Country — The Host Country

Posted on Sep 19, 2017 by Nate Logsdon

The Host Country started as a Cedar Falls-based duo with Diana Weishaar and Ty Wistrand supplying tasteful piano and guitar settings to generous pop songs that they could really lay into hard in live settings. Since those early days the two have been vocal soul-mates with perfectly complementary timbres that make their songs ring. […]