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Infestissumam
The Swedish metallers raised eyebrows with their Lucifer-loving lyrics, Blue Öyster Cult choruses and their frontman's infernal pope get-up, but on their second LP they embrace something even more unholy: prog. The songs are knotty and complicated; the multivalenced "Jigolo Har Megiddo" feels like it's set not in hell but in Kansas. The results are […]
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Yellow & Green
This Georgia metal band's most accessible record is this sprawling, 75-minute double album. The edges are smoother and the choruses more pronounced than before, but they're still as marauding and feral as ever. The Yellow disc is more immediate ("March to the Sea" is Fugazi via Rush); Green is artier, stretching filmy guitars across monk-like […]
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King Tuff
If "Keep On Movin'" is to be believed, King Tuff's guitar doesn't shred, it "drools." That's an appropriate visual: The greasy, catchy garage-pop on the Vermont-bred singer's second record sneers like convenience store parking lot stoners. Black-and-blue bruisers "Anthem" and "Bad Thing" benefit from some chicken-fried riffing, but Tuff is just as good in the […]
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A Church That Fits Our Needs
The second album from North Carolina chamber-pop collective Lost in the Trees opens on a note of uncertainty, a far-off piano playing a chilling minor chord. It's a good indication of what's to come. Over the course of a dozen songs, frontman Ari Picker tries to make sense of his mother's suicide against a backdrop […]
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Gone
The songs on the debut album from Vacationer move like musical Rube Goldberg machines. Slow-rolling percussion topples tiny blips of guitar in "No Rules," gently swiveling guitar trigger Christmas-light synths in "Gone," and a tumbling electro-harp kicks open the door to let in a ghost choir on "Dreamlike." The pleading voice at the center of […]
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The Interpreter: Live at Largo
Who knew the Pixies' "Wave of Mutilation" sounds best played as a back-porch country stomper? Only Rhett Miller, apparently, who gives the song that treatment halfway through this collection of covers recorded live at the Los Angeles club Largo in 2008. Elsewhere, the Old 97's frontman favors more modest makeovers: David Bowie's "Queen Bitch," with Jon Brion banging away blissfully […]
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Mary J. Blige, Kelly Clarkson Lead VH1 Divas Tour
Annual TV special features stirring performances, Winehouse tribute
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Acrobats
The second album from UK trio Peggy Sue arrives draped in black lace and casting an evil eye. Though its predecessor burst with folky sea shanties, Acrobats is all pallor and dread, icy ghost stories delivered in baleful moans. "I cut my teeth upon his flesh," Katy Young coolly coos over icicle-stiff guitars on opener […]
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Long Live The King
On this six track EP, the Decemberists stick to the sound that made this year's The King Is Dead so tasty, leaning into rustic Americana like they're settling into an old chair. They recast the Grateful Dead's "Row Jimmy" as bourbon-bleary blues, and "I 4 U & U 4 Me" chugs along confidently. In the […]
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