The needle drops on Barry Phipps’ The Town and an uplifting organ crackles and pops, skipping its way through a brief instrumental intro and sighing toward a jolly, aptly titled “Sunny Sunday Afternoon.” It may feel a bit too twee for a spring 2015 release, but it is catchy and beautifully arranged, and repeat listens create an emotional reassurance rooted in a kind of imagined nostalgia; it’s as if a past that can’t be placed is painting a future for us of daily routines carried out with care and civility, and neighbors remembering to love before being left to miss one another.
Music Reviews
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Kelly Pardekooper – Milk in Sunshine
The musician credits of Kelly Pardekooper’s new album Milk in Sunshine is a who’s who of Eastern Iowa country, folk and blues legends including Bo Ramsey, Dave Zollo, Dave Moore, Pieta Brown and Radoslav Lorkovic. Milk in Sunshine is a massive 24-song CD and/or vinyl LP package encompassing 10 new songs with a bonus 16-song “greatest hits” of Kelly Pardekooper.
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Album Review: Pieta Brown – Paradise Outlaw
During her show at CSPS in October 2013, Pieta Brown mentioned that she was working on her next album at Justin Vernon’s April Base studios in Fall Creek, Wis. As a fan of Vernon—better known as the frontman and songwriter of Bon Iver—I was anxious to hear the results.
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Album Review: Bull Black Nova – Don’t Fall Away
Don’t Fall Away is an album of ambitious art-pop songs with a pretty broad palette of sounds and styles. It’s at least partially home-recorded by A. J. Worden, the man behind Bull Black Nova, though Brook Hoover, of the Surf Zombies, gets an engineering credit as well. No matter the means of production, this is a well-recorded, dynamically dramatic album. It really is true that these days all you need is a computer, a decent microphone or two and good ideas.
Posted inAlbum Reviews, Arts & Entertainment
Album Review: Jack Lion — JAC EP
It seemed that after Slip Silo vocalist and guitarist Matt Logan split the Midwest and his band to take an opportunity on the West Coast, the remainder of the band was rudderless. In a March 2013 interview with Little Village he said that he hoped they’d be able to continue on the mission of connecting and tapping into a “transcendent and universal creativity source” without him.
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Album Review: The Sapwoods – Peaks and Valleys
Iowa City band The Sapwoods are back with their second album titled Peaks and Valleys. While the lineup in the band has changed since their 2012 release Electric Glow, the core of Justin Swafford (vocals and guitar) and David Suchan (lead guitar) remains the same. Joining Swafford and Suchan are Brian Speer on bass, Derrick Cook on drums and Miranda Peyton on keys, vocals and guitar.
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Album Review: Alex Body – Aquarian Nightmare
Alex Body — of Twelve Canons, Miracles of God, Giant Question Mark, Shitty Wizard — has released three solo albums, of which Aquarian Nightmare is the most recent. Since 2011′s Cutting Down Camelot, Body has waded further into the electronic end of the psych-pop swamp. This album’s sound is a thick mixture of drum machines and analog synths, and he is more confident of his voice, cutting back a bit on the slapback echo and reverb
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Album Review: The Main Sequence – Self-Titled LP
Ambient music generally has no narrative, no frontman and sometimes no recognizable foreground. This is a genre where practitioners may outnumber the total audience, at least in the U.S. where Americans like celebrity, attitude and a human focal point in their music. Ambient music doesn’t just lack those things, it’s an active rejection of them…
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Album Reviews: Doll Food – Marrow Deep
Doll Food, a former Iowa City improvisational noise duo (now based out of Chicago), has been crafting zonked-out and eerie soundscapes for about a year now. Brandon Volz and vocalist Bri LaPelusa’s composing process is deceptively simple: Each song begins with LaPelusa layering vocal loops into a Julianna Barwick-esque, one-woman chorus, followed by Volz creating a decaying soun
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Album Review: 85 Decibel Monks – Pool Cues
85 Decibel Monks Pool Cues tackfu.com 85 Decibel Monks is the Iowa City-based duo of Tack-Fu and Grover Beats. Their newest release, Pool Cues, is a 29-track instrumental odyssey with the cool, light, jazz vibe of chilling with a martini at an upscale lounge or are relaxing on a yacht in Monaco. The third track, […]
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Album Reviews: Velcro Moxie – Restless
Velcro Moxie is a rock and roll band fronted by a remarkable voices of Jasmine Terrell and Nick Carney. They’ve become a live mainstay at the Yacht Club since getting together in 2011. If you live in Iowa City when a band plays the Yacht Club frequently, they get pigeonholed as one of “those” bands—a bit jammy, a bit hippy dippy—but that’s usually an unfair judgement, both of the bands and of Yacht Club.
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Album Reviews: The River Monks – Home is the House
If Sufjan Stevens ever decided to return to his 50-state project—an attempt at composing album-length tributes for each state—he would be wise to skip Iowa altogether. The River Monks have beat him to the punch with their new album, Home is the House, one of the most essential and distilled “Iowan” records in recent memory, complete with traditional instruments contrasted by progressive song structures. Songs address themes of nature, friends and family and have the kind of studio polish that humbly displays the hard work that the band’s six musicians must have poured into the album.
