Curt Oren is a saxophonist who plays his own solo compositions. You have to admire him for that even before you hear what he does.
Music Reviews
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Lipstick Homicide – Out Utero
It’s hard for me not to think of Lipstick Homicide as kids; they’re contemporaries of my children. I first heard them when they were barely old enough to drive, and now they’re all grown up, actual 20-somethings. Throughout that time they’ve been remarkably consistent—they play melodic punk rock.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Limbs – Diverted Urges
I was a little worried by the first song (past the trippy intro) “Roll Like Down,” because it had such a late-90s Matchbox 20/Smashmouth/Sugar Ray sound to it. I could do an entire review-length rant on how much I hate that kind of thing. But there’s more to Limbs than the tunes they heard in mom’s car when they were kids. They also manage to avoid the other godforsaken musical monster of the ‘90s: rap rock. MC and singer Ty James has the rap thing down, but these guys have cooked up something stranger and more interesting.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: King of the Tramps – Wicked Mountain
Before receiving a review copy of Wicked Mountain I hadn’t even heard of King Of The Tramps’ hometown, Auburn, Iowa. It’s apparently a ‘suburb’ of Carroll, Iowa, which is to say it must be vanishingly small–the sort of Iowa town that barely exists and keeps getting smaller. Completely irrelevant to this review, but it’s worth visiting www.auburniowa.net, whose homepage is dominated by a slideshow of a town completely devoid of human habitation. The town motto should be “Auburn: Park Wherever You Like.” It’s a place where you make your own entertainment or go quietly mad.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Coolzey – Hit Factory
The only reason Coolzey isn’t the most productive Iowa musician is that Sam Locke Ward has whatever’s the pop songwriting equivalent of Tourette Syndrome. Still, I think he may have the edge on Sam for stylistic range. One moment he’s an indie rocker, the next he’s a soul singer and then he’s some sort of goofy corn field Kanye West.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Samuel Locke Ward – In Case You Have Doubt
Iowa City’s under-employed over-achiever Sam Locke Ward is back with the 6th installment of his year-long “album a month” project, proving once again that he must not sleep in order to have the time to be this prolific. This latest album highlights his obsession with R Stevie Moore and The Beach Boys, not as imitation but as homage. Sam’s songwriting process is akin to what happens to obsessive Twitterers and Facebookers: If you write all the time, you increase in fluency and shorten the distance between the ideas in your head and their manifestations in the real world.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: The Lonelyhearts – Years in the Great Interior
People who believe too much in the primacy of words sometimes lose touch with the music, but The Lonelyhearts keep things well in balance.
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Album Review: Emperors Club – Killer Companions
The full-length debut from Emperors Club, Killer Companion, is a surprisingly opulent pop record. At its core, it is wiry and ready to rock, but with all the glorious harmonies, subtle keyboard lines and intertwining guitar work, the sonic palette is as rich as the emotional one.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Huge Lewis – Ascending Into Heaven
“I have swallowed the sky/through only a straw”—the 56-second opener of Ascending Into Heaven is a quiet moment of organ and silly psychedelic lyrics that ends without resolving to the tonic. It gives no clue to the sloppy, unhinged pop songs that follow it. The rest of the songs make me think of middle period Pavement, but where Pavement grooves, Huge Lewis lurches and yelps.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Raw Mojo – Brickbat Theory
Raw Mojo is a rock band, full stop. Not to be reductive about what Raw Mojo does, but there’s something really basic and elemental about what they do. Hard hitting drums, loud fuzz guitars fused tightly to a deep bass into 10 strings of fury. Lyrics that don’t try very hard for profundity
Posted inAlbum Reviews, Arts & Entertainment
Album Review: Foul Tip – Heaven Now
Reviewing the latest EP from Foul Tip is, well, sort of a challenge. The duo’s second release, Heaven Now, has a bit of an identity crisis. Four of the cuts on the cassette are propulsive, evocative chunks of post-punk and three of the tracks are goofy, but still mostly hard hitting. However, two of the songs are so successful, it really doesn’t bear mentioning the remaining five in such a short write-up.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Dana T – {Your Name}
The latest from Dana Telsrow (a.k.a. Dana T) is a six-song collection of mostly effective digital-baroque-funk (consider that genre term coined). The University of Iowa student has has enhanced his already dense compositions on {Your Name} with a horde of horn players whose work vacillates between classically inspired baroque-pop trills and funky blasts and stabs.
