It’s a ballsy move to rename your band after you’ve had some notoriety. The Olympics decided to go back into the studio after their 2012 album with renewed commitment…
Music Reviews
Posted inAlbum Reviews, Arts & Entertainment
Album Review: Pigs and Clover – Self-titled
Pigs and Clover are Matt and Jamie Kearney, reliable participants at political protests and labor rallies around Johnson County. If you hear someone blowing a conch shell at a demonstration, that’s Matt. Jamie’s the snare drummer. They recently released their eponymous third record…
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Album Review: Sweet Cacophony – Wind, Sand & Stars
The members of Iowa City-based folk quartet Sweet Cacophony have been playing music collectively for many decades. However, these lifelong musicians didn’t meet each other until recently. Life threw them together at the Hilltop Tavern’s Friends of Old Time Music jam sessions, which harmonica/accordion player Dennis Roseman has long organized. Peter Rolnick (guitars/mandolin), Jim Delaney (guitars/percussion) and Dave Parsons (bass/whistle) were the first to come together, in 2013. Roseman joined them soon after.
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Album Review: Lissie – My Wild West
Lissie My Wild West www.lissie.com “I want my forty acres in the sun” —“Hero” Lissie’s latest album My Wild West is at once a love letter and a breakup letter. After 12 years in California chasing her dreams, which included a major label contract, Lissie decided to change the path she was on. In an […]
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Album Review: Elizabeth Moen – Self-titled
Elizabeth Moen Elizabeth Moen www.elizabethmoen.bandcamp.com On “Songbird,” the first track from her eponymous debut album, Elizabeth Moen sings, “Singing at the top of my lungs trying to get through.” It shows off her voice and guitar in a way that perfectly situates her in the singer-songwriter tradition alongside Joni Mitchell, Janis Ian and Judee Sill. […]
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Album review: Lynne Hart, Pat Smith & Richard Wagor – Roots of Rhythm
Listening to the Roots of Rhythm album from the trio of Lynne Hart, Pat Smith and Rich Wagor, I am transported to a Woody Allen film in my mind. Allen’s use of early jazz music both reflects his particular taste in music and serves to ensure a kind of timelessness—that same timelessness is reinforced on this album by Hart’s clarinet.
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Album review: Jim Viner’s Incredible B3 Band – Comango!
Jim Viner’s Iowa City music resumé goes back a ways, at least to the 1990s, in the bands Head Candy, Bent Scepters and Brother Trucker. Jim Viner’s Incredible B3 Band is chock full of IC veterans, like the organists Radoslav Lorković and Nate Basinger. The band’s personnel overlaps with The Diplomats of Solid Sound, led by Doug Roberson, who also plays here.
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Album reviews: Dick Prall – Dickie
Since 1998 Dick Prall has been spinning his particular flavor of “sad bastard” pop music (to quote Barry from the film High Fidelity). A couple of brilliant power pop releases, a few polished singer-songwriter releases (including a minor hit “The Cornflakes Song” with Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket) and now he’s back with a new project…
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Album Review: Jeff Miguel – Perserverance
Saxophonist Jeff Miguel is a recent graduate of the University of Iowa jazz studies program, which has in recent years spawned bands like Euforquestra and Koplant No. Perserverance collects eight of Miguel’s own compositions, which is a gutsy move in the context of traditional jazz, a genre where musicians are still finding something new in standards from the last century…
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Album Review: Dagmar – Afterlight
Gemma Rose and Miranda Lee are Dagmar—a band born from the eight-year groundwork laid by their previous trio Rock Paper Scissors, which created music of an acoustic jazz and vocal harmony style reminiscent of ‘40s swing…
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Album Review: Maiden Mars – The Other Side
Iowa City bands swap members, and the members swap instruments. Case in point: Maiden Mars, which boasts Lipstick Homicide guitarist Kate Kane on drums. In this band, Alex Skalla and Katie Rosenberger handle the songwriting…
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Album Review: Mad Monks – The Dark Retreat
Mad Monks The Dark Retreat facebook.com/MadMonks Mention “concept album” and many will picture the recorded excess of bands like The Who, Rush, Styx, Pink Floyd, Yes, ELP — the list is endless. Sometimes it’s done well, but the need to squeeze in an overwrought story oftentimes compromises the overall work. Iowa City band Mad Monks […]
