If you are a follower of the music website daytrotter.com, you have already been exposed to Johnnie Cluney’s illustrations, which give the site its signature pen-and-ink look. What you might not be aware of, however, is Cluney’s work as a musician with his band Bedroom Shrine. The group’s debut full-length album, No Déjà Vu, is a product of the Quad Cities’ tight-knit music community. No Déjà Vu is the first release for Iowa’s newest record label, Cartouche Records, run by Davenport’s Ragged Record…
Album reviews
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Album Reviews: Jordan Mayland and the Thermal Detonators – I Wrote It All Down
Jordan Mayland has an insane work ethic, that much is clear. The Ames-based musician has offered his talents to a huge array of bands: indie-pop acts like…
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Album Reviews – Lake Street Dive – Bad Self Portraits
Recently, buzz has been building around the band Lake Street Dive. It started with an unexpected appearance on the Colbert Report on Feb. 5, where Stephen Colbert asked the band if they were ready for the “Colbert Bump”—the reported spike in popularity guests and topics receive after being featured on the show.
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Album Reviews: Works by Matthew Davis, Sergio Leone
When Matthew Davis died in his sleep of an aneurysm in 2003, the loss to Iowa City was larger than the death of one man. His band Ten Grand — so named because, as rumor has it, a more affluent musical group paid them an undisclosed amount to give up their former name Vidablue — was on the verge of becoming a big thing outside our small…
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Album Reviews: The Surf Zombies – It’s a…THING!
The Surf Zombies are back with their fourth album, It’s A… THING!, which marks the second album featuring their current band lineup: Founding member Brook Hoover is on guitar along with Ian Williams from the Wheelers and the Blendours, also on guitar. There is also Tyler Russell on drums and Trevor Treiber from the Blendours on bass, replacing…
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Album Reviews: Muscle – My House is a Show
Kathleen Hanna, the singer for Bikini Kill and original Riot Grrrl, did something important around the time the women in Muscle were born: She stopped asking permission from men to define who she was. She was angry and confrontational and sexy and funny, and she rocked.
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Album Reviews: Death Ships – Turn of the Century EP
In interviews with R.E.M. around the time of their ‘92 album Automatic For The People, the band commented that it was difficult to write good uptempo…
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Album Reviews: Speakerwire Collins – The Boy Said My Name’s Johnny
Speakerwire Collins is Brian Boelman of the Miracles Of God and Iowa City’s most unpredictable guitarist, bassist and songwriter, Ed Gray. They’re the…
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Album Reviews: Coolzey – Dark Mantras
Coolzey must be very wicked, since it’s clear he gets no rest. Sandwiched in between all the other musical activities he’s dropped Dark Mantras, which contains 13 short hip-hop instrumentals. This is more a beat tape than an album proper; each track is a live performance on his Akai MPC1000 Sampler…
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Album Reviews: In Rooms – The Night Has Come
Heather and Nick Leo form the core of the Des Moines-based tropical pop band, In Rooms. While they describe their sound as a mash-up of dub legend King Tubby and Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa, their new album The Night Has Come does not reference either of these artists. The Leos instead reference those artists’ musical regions. The eight songs on this brief, very gentle album pull from Latin American genres like Música Popular Brasileira (MPB), cumbia and bossa nova as well as reggae—but rocksteady rather than dub…
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Album Reviews: The Post Mortems – Cracked and Crooked
I recently reviewed a new record from Acoustic Guillotine, who, like The Post Mortems, comprise a drummer and bassist. The Post Mortems don’t sound at all like Acoustic Guillotine; apparently even the most stripped-down of instrumentation contains many possibilities. The Post Mortems’ sound is defined by a clean bass tone and tom-heavy drums. They remind me a bit of Soundgarden: Devin Alexander’s voice has some of Chris Cornell’s operatic…
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Elite 8: The best albums of 2013
2013 was a fertile year for music. Rap came strong with ASAP Rocky’s debut, the El-P and Killer Mike Run the Jewels collab and more toughboy posturing from Pusha T. Disclosure kept the dancefloor hot with its improbable ‘90s house flashback while Rhye kept bedrooms steamy with their Sade-inspired R&B jams. Janelle Monae stepped forth […]
