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68 items by Chuck Eddy
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The View From The Bottom | ALBUM REVIEW
Post-pop-punk bro-rockers Lit – known for 1999's "My Own Worst Enemy" – return eight years after their last album, three after losing their drummer to cancer. Their ballads now get choked up over bygone glory days, while...
June 18, 2012 10:00 AM ET -
Lex Hives | ALBUM REVIEW
Unlike fellow garage revisionists the White Stripes, the Hives never had any highfalutin art to live up to; the color-coordinated Swedes were here for the lulz. The peaks on their first LP in five years...
June 5, 2012 12:15 AM ET -
Magic Hour | ALBUM REVIEW
The hedonistic disco–pop crew connects when it drops its guard (the cheating anthem "Year of Living Dangerously") or wigs out, but the Brit–pop and Elton John moves here feel phoned in. Moderation in pursuit of...
May 29, 2012 10:00 AM ET -
Picture Show | ALBUM REVIEW
Committed to modern youth and old New Wave, Neon Trees are the all-Mormon Utah four-piece who hit big with the exasperatingly sticky "Animal." On their second LP, they still favor mannered Anglophile synth pop that has somehow...
May 8, 2012 12:00 AM ET -
The Night The Sun | ALBUM REVIEW
California club pop chirper Dev’s debut is as stark as it is sweet. This is owed partly to the casually giddy lightness of her talk-singing – familiar from her slizzered 2010 cameo on Far East Movement’s smash...
March 27, 2012 12:10 AM ET -
Breakfast | ALBUM REVIEW
This pop-rap pair's debut LP opens with sounds of children playing, and infantile vocal snippets tie it together: twee, high-pitched, pre-verbal. The Philadelphia duo sampled MGMT's "Kids" on 2010's global hit "Opposite of Adults"; Breakfast proves that...
February 28, 2012 12:25 AM ET -
Resolution | ALBUM REVIEW
Too brutal for thrash, too lyrically comprehensible for death metal, too purist to resort to screamo or rapcore choruses, Virginia's Lamb of God are just commercial enough to have scored three consecutive Top 10 albums. On Resolution,...
February 23, 2012 10:00 AM ET -
Blue Slide Park | ALBUM REVIEW
White rapper from upper Rust Belt conquers world – sound familiar? Pittsburgh's Mac Miller, the Wiz Khalifa labelmate whose debut LP has already topped the album charts, is no Marshall Mathers. But when his themes stick close to Steeltown, he's likable enough. When his rhymes turn...
December 13, 2011 12:30 PM ET -
Lulu | ALBUM REVIEW
When Lou Reed and Metallica walked the wild side together at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame anniversary concert in 2009, it seemed like a one-off jam session. But two years later, they've joined...
November 1, 2011 12:05 AM ET -
How Do You Do | ALBUM REVIEW
Mayer Hawthorne's oldschool pop-R&B homages are so meticulous that it's tempting to overrate his pipes. Dude's got a convincing falsetto; in the Seventies, he might've made the backup-harmony cut for some mid-level vocal group. Hawthorne's second album...
October 25, 2011 12:00 AM ET -
Heritage | ALBUM REVIEW
Stockholm quintet Opeth have been gradually opening up their sound, inching away from deathmetal terror and toward old-school prog rock. On Heritage, they could almost be a jazz-fusion band conjured up by a Renaissance-faire magician. They exhibit...
September 28, 2011 2:50 PM ET -
Mastodon, 'The Hunter' | BLOG ENTRY
Over their first four albums, these Georgia sludgethrashers grew increasingly conceptual, centering lyrics around classical elements (fire, water, earth) while expanding toward classical-movement song lengths. But after 2009's grandiose Crack the Skye -...
September 27, 2011 4:51 PM ET -
The Hunter | ALBUM REVIEW
Over their first four albums, these Georgia sludgethrashers grew increasingly conceptual, centering lyrics around classical elements (fire, water, earth) while expanding toward classical-movement song lengths. But after 2009's grandiose Crack the Skye - which had an...
September 27, 2011 12:35 AM ET -
Chickenfoot III | ALBUM REVIEW
Click to listen to Chickenfoot's 'Three and a Half Letters' Sammy Hagar, Joe Satriani, Michael Anthony and Chad Smith have no problem finding a groove...
September 27, 2011 12:15 AM ET -
Monument Of Metal: The Very Best Of Anvil | ALBUM REVIEW
The 2009 documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil unmasked this Toronto band as a real-life Spinal Tap, founded by two polite Jewish boys who never caught a break. Questions of musical worth went mostly unanswered. This...
September 27, 2011 12:10 AM ET -
Pistol Annies, 'Hell on Heels' | BLOG ENTRY
On the debut by their ad hoc trio, Miranda Lambert and friends Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley show off the kind of hard-living wit and hardscrabble class consciousness that have become tough to find in...
September 13, 2011 1:22 PM ET -
Welcome 2 My Nightmare | ALBUM REVIEW
On 1975's Welcome to My Nightmare, Alice Cooper largely traded in high school parking-lot hard rock for fright-show theater; it had bruising moments, but also self-parodying schmaltz. Welcome 2 My Nightmare is its sequel, so...
September 13, 2011 12:40 AM ET -
Hell on Heels | ALBUM REVIEW
On the debut by their ad hoc trio, Miranda Lambert and friends Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley show off the kind of hard-living wit and hardscrabble class consciousness that have become tough to find in Nashville. Their...
September 12, 2011 7:20 PM ET -
Band to Watch: Dum Dum Girls' Sixties-Inspired Girl-Group Pop | ARTICLE
Click to listen to the Dum Dum Girls' "Coming Down" Who: The girl-group-harmonizing fuzz-pop project of 28-year-old, Bay Area-suburb-raised Dee Dee Penny, who has...
August 31, 2011 12:35 PM ET -
Band to Watch: JEFF the Brotherhood's Pop-wise Scuzz-Rock | ARTICLE
May 31, 2011 6:25 PM ET
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