Billy Mac and Pete R are veteran Iowa City musicians, going back to the 1980s punk/hardcore heyday. Though this self-titled album is more metal than anything else, I have to plead ignorance as to which metal sub-genre Acoustic Guillotine pledges their allegiance to. Their bass-and-guitar-duo sound lacks metal’s trademark guitar heroics, but they’re too energetic and obtuse to be stoner rock.
Album reviews
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: The Uniphonics – Crawl
One of the most unfortunate legacies of the 90s was Rap Rock. Guitars and rhymes together don’t have to suck but it seems like those bands were trying hard to do just that. Thankfully the Uniphonics have gone another direction, mixing rhymes with funk. What could be more natural, since hip-hop was built on beats […]
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Let's Whisper – Keep A Secret?
Dana and Colin make up Let’s Whisper. They have released a teaser EP with some material that points to the future. It is a splendid piece of listening, one that will show you what the American indie pop underground is all about in the 2010s.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Pieta Brown – One and All
Local Albums: May 2010 – One and All, the sixth full-length from Pieta Brown, finds the folky at her most relaxed and confident. One and All feels like a commiseration at The Mill: It’s easy, fluid and full of prospective delivered in a comfortable drawl. The album opens with a double-shot of hopeless romanticism. “Wishes […]
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Samuel Locke Ward & Darren Brown – From the Privilege of the Grave
Local Albums: May 2010 – The fact that you can hold this album in your hands is astounding. From the Privilege of the Grave faced nearly every hurdle imaginable–from technical and logistical issues to legal and financial difficulties. That it was worth the wait, is still more astounding.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Johnny On Point – Keefin It Real
Johnny On Point’s new CD Keefin It Real doesn’t do anything to bring dance music out of the shadows, but I doubt that’s his intent. He doesn’t bother to conform to any genre I know–they’re not House, Techno, Dubstep or what’s currently mis-labeled Electro. The only thing I can really call him is a stone-cold sound geek.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Idris Goodwin: Break Beat Poems
Local Albums: April 2010 – Back in the day–1979–Hawkeye basketball star Ronnie Lester was a hip hop ambassador. Ronnie took his boom box everywhere , playing “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang nonstop. It was, to Iowa ears, something strange and alien, and yet irresistible. Idris Goodwin’s track “Isiah Thomas Camp” took me back to […]
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Sad Iron Music: Self Titled
Local Albums: April 2010 – Sad Iron Music is the musical persona of Jason Lewis, originally from West Virginia, but living now in Iowa City and attending the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He was in the alt-country band Star City that a few years back achieved some prominence, accompanied, unfortunately, by little financial success. After turning […]
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Ben Schmidt: Silt
Local Albums: March 2010 – Ben Schmidt is a guy who writes songs and plays guitar, which in Iowa City, means he has to work pretty hard to stand out from the crowd. Schmidt’s singing is precisely pitched and without ornament. His songwriting has a pleasant, relaxed accessibility. His guitar playing is accomplished, but Schmidt’s […]
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Surf Zombies: Something Weird
Local Albums: April 2010 – Being of a certain age, and having been a kid in 1960s California, surf music is totemic to me. From listening to my uncle’s Beach Boys records on a blonde-tolex-covered suitcase record player, to hearing “Wipeout” played by every garage band on my walk home from Booksin Elementary in San […]
Posted inAlbum Reviews
The Woes – Heaven Knows
John Schlotfelt reviews “Heaven Knows,” by The Woes, who will visit the Mill this Saturday night to play with Shame Train and The Lonelyhearts
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Petit Mal
Petit Mal Bless Your Little Heart Public Schools Records www.myspace.com/petitmal Petit Mal’s latest, Bless Your Little Heart, is a collection of 10 scrappy tunes following in the footsteps of fellow Iowa alt-rockers House of Large Sizes. The saccharine sweetness of the album’s title is almost nowhere to be found. If you want Care Bears and […]
