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Review: The Sonder Bombs – Modern Female Rockstar

MODERN FEMALE ROCKSTAR
Mary Varvaris

I’ve been waiting for a band like The Sonder Bombs to come along. The four-piece from Cleveland, Ohio has assembled an immersive collection of tracks to make up their debut album, Modern Female Rockstar. The band promises to change up the scene with their brand of unrelenting, socially conscious pop-punk – with the ukulele as a main star! Pop punk hasn’t been this fun, or sounded this important, in god knows how long. Modern Female Rockstar is urgent, shimmers, and explodes. With “Title” and “Twinkle Lights,” The Sonder Bombs join peers in UK riot grrrl group Peach Club and punk rock band Dream Wife, as well as Australian rockers Camp Cope and Courtney Barnett in penning tracks that carry hefty messages – these phenomenal artists relentlessly and publicly condemn sexual assault. But, The Sonder Bombs don’t forget to have some fun along the way, allowing their songs to revel in quickly found assurance.

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Review: Tokyo Police Club – TPC

TPC
Adam Grundy

On TPC, the self-titled and fourth full-length LP from Tokyo Police Club, they crank up the guitars and hone in on their songwriting. Coming off of two quick EPs, entitled Melon Collie and the Infinite Radness (Part I and II), after the success of my favorite effort to date by the band, Forcefield, Tokyo Police Club wanted to reinvent themselves once again. What we are left with is a solid mix of guitar-driven rock by a band still trying to figure out who they are.

Starting off the 12-song set is the track called “New Blues,” that reminded me a bit of the garage-rock style of The Strokes with Dave Monks trademark earnest vocal delivery. When Monks sings, “Battle cry, I can barely sleep/It happens every single time/It’s in my heart/It’s in my soul/For once I don’t want it to be denied,” you can feel every heartbeat and drop of emotion that went into the song. It also doesn’t hurt to have a very talented guitarist backing Monks’ words in Josh Hook, who certainly lives up to his last name by crafting several key hooks in many of the memorable songs found on this album.

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Review: Belly – IMMIGRANT

Belly - Immigrant
Tommy Monroe

Belly is a Canadian rapper with Palestinian-Jordanian ancestry. Hoping to escape violence and poverty, his family immigrated to Ottawa, Canada when he was a boy. It was during this phase of his life that he learned how to sell drugs, and live with the challenges of being a Muslim in a primarily non-Muslim country. On IMMIGRANT, Belly tells this story with the help of some top-rated producers, such as TRAKGIRL, Ben Billions, Metroboomin, and Southside who deliver the catchy beats as he captivates listeners with his thought-provoking lyrics.

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Review: A Star is Born Soundtrack

A Star is Born Soundtrack
Adam Grundy

On the music for A Star is Born, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s on-camera chemistry translates brilliantly onto the charismatic and charming soundtrack. The album opens up with an intro of a band tuning up and quickly blends into “Black Eyes,” that features Bradley Cooper on lead vocals in a bluesy rock track that shows off his impressive vocal delivery. The track itself was co-written by Cooper and Lukas Nelson and is an excellent way to start the soundtrack.

One major disclaimer about this album is that it is interspersed with movie dialogue throughout, which was a bit of a turn off for me. Some may like remembering these key scenes of dialogue from the film, but on an album that has 34 tracks, I found it a bit distracting from the songs themselves.

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Review: mewithoutYou – [Untitled]

mewithoutYou - [Untitled]
Drew Beringer

After the release and touring of 2015’s revelationary Pale Horses, mewithoutYou needed to find some space before the apocalypse turned inwards. Vocalist Aaron Weiss relocated to Idaho with his family, a makeshift home studio rig and MIDI keyboard while the rest of his bandmates (including his brother Mike) remained in Philadelphia workshopping new ideas with producer Will Yip. There’s that one saying, you know, that distance makes the heart grow fonder? Well for the genre-defying quintet, distance also made the creativity flow more freely than every before, while some inner-band tensions and relationship strife served as the impetus to untapped creativity and fueled the [Untitled] recording sessions with Yip, yielding 19 new songs (spanning one EP and one LP, both sharing the same name) that showcase the duality within mewithoutYou’s dazzling soundscape.

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Interview: Typesetter

Typesetter
Zac Djamoos

Typesetter recently signed to 6131 Records and announced their sophomore record – it’s called Nothing Blues and it’s a masterclass in anthemic punk rock. I spoke to Alex Palermo, bassist/vocalist, and Marc Bannes, guitarist/vocalist, about writing the album and what the band did in the four years since their debut. Nothing Blues is out October 26 and is available for preorder through 6131’s store.

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The Podcast Worm: Halloween Unmasked

Halloween
Deanna Chapman

Halloween Unmasked is my kind of podcast. I’m three episodes in on it, and it feels like a new take on film podcasts. Usually, I’m listening to pop culture podcasts that are discussion-based (and mostly hosted by dudes). I listen to shows like Fatman On Batman (now branded Fatman Beyond), The Watch, and Channel 33, which has a lot of sub-shows within its feed. I listen to a lot of shows from The Ringer.

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Review: Twenty One Pilots – Trench

Trench
Adam Grundy

Twenty One Pilots are out for world domination, as is made entirely evident on Trench, the fifth full-length LP from the dynamic duo from Columbus, Ohio. From the first gripping notes on “Jumpsuit,” it’s clear that Twenty One Pilots are calling the masses to join them in their quest for being the biggest band in the world. The fact that this album is outstanding shouldn’t stand in the way of Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun from accomplishing their goal.

Having previously heard the outstanding production of the singles such as “Levitate,” “Nico and the Niners,” and the aforementioned “Jumpsuit,” I had the inclination that Twenty One Pilots would continue to raise the bar on the already-lofty expectations for the artist. Holy hell, they pulled it off.

The first thing that stood out to me while listening to this comprehensive 14-track set is how damn good the production is throughout. Trench was produced by Tyler Joseph and Paul Meany (Mutemath), and they both hit a home run on this one. I was blown away by their other collaborative work, the EP TOP x MM, that was released for free back in December 2016, that featured several “reimagined” versions of songs from Blurryface as well as the brilliant single, “Heathens.” This continued collaboration is paying significant dividends for Twenty One Pilots as they continue to strive for a more organic sounding type of album that shines brightly.

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Review: Death Cab For Cutie – Transatlanticism

Death Cab for Cutie
Mary Varvaris

Transatlanticism is my favorite album of all time. Death Cab For Cutie’s fourth album, released fifteen years ago today, is the band’s second concept album. Transatlanticism centers itself around long-distance love, with both its strengths and downfalls. Ben Gibbard, the band’s soft-sung lead vocalist, lyricist, and guitarist, penned the term “transatlanticism” to express the unfathomable emotional space between two young lovers. The distance Gibbard discusses feels impenetrable. Transatlanticism sees Death Cab For Cutie experimenting with soft-loud dynamics (“Transatlanticism”, “We Looked Like Giants”), perfecting the gorgeous quiet track (“Lightness”, “A Lack of Color”), and witnesses them pushing themselves to go all-out and produce the flawless pop song (“The Sound Of Settling”). Completing all of this is the efforts of guitarist, co-writer and producer Chris Walla. Walla’s lo-fi production is perfect for Transatlanticism. Fifteen years later, and Transatlanticism still sounds incredibly rich and indulgent, yet also warm and intimate.

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Review: Hippo Campus – Bambi

Hippo Campus
Adam Grundy

On Hippo Campus latest offering, Bambi, they continue to stretch out their unique brand of indie rock and get their audience to come along for every note of the thrilling LP. Hippo Campus have plenty of credibility and accolades to their name in just a short amount of time, and they could have gone any number of directions with their second full-length album. What we are left with is hard to classify, yet incredibly strong, work of art from the five-piece group from St. Paul, Minnesota.

The album opener, “Mistakes,” begins with a softly sung, and almost faint, vocal delivery while the midway point begins to bring on the other samples and noise elements that are prominent on this record. “Anxious” follows this introductory track with the quirky brand of Indie/Emo rock that we have grown accustomed to from the band over the years, while still bringing in fresh elements to the Hippo Campus sound. The first real hook that got me sucked into this record is when singer Jake Luppen shouts, “Tried screaming but I won’t believe it/I’ll tell them what they want to hear then/Just give me a week or two to find it/Then maybe we’ll get back to the place we started.” This is precisely what anxiety feels like making you do: screaming from the inside, all the while doubting yourself that it was the right path to take.

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Interview: Matt Nathanson Is the Most Nostalgic Guy in the Room

Craig Manning

When Matt Nathanson started writing his new record, he had a vision. He wanted it to be political. He wanted it to be uplifting. He wanted to inspire his listeners to see a brighter future.

The songs that came out of him had other plans.

Sings His Sad Heart, the follow-up to Nathanson’s 2015 LP Show Me Your Fangs, is personal instead of political, sad instead of uplifting, and lost in thoughts about the past instead of looking forward to the future. It is a complete contradiction of the album that Nathanson wanted to make. And yet, it’s also the most at home he’s sounded on a record since 2010’s breezy Modern Love.

Then again, Nathanson has always been an artist defined by his contradictions. He’s a riotously funny and jovial live performer who makes crushingly sad records. He’s a guy who exudes confidence and charisma onstage but admits he isn’t very confident as an artist. And he’s a songwriter who’d name the happiest song on his record “Sadness.”

When I spoke to Nathanson in August, I called him “the most nostalgic guy in the room.” It’s a role I often find myself playing: the guy who digs through TimeHop every day and sends pictures and “remember this?” messages to old friends, or the guy who spends entirely too much time thinking about people he lost touch with, wondering if they ever think of him too.

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Review: The Living End – Wunderbar

The Living End - Wunderbar
Damien Davies

The Living End return with what is probably their best album in over ten years. It ticks every box it needs to, and then some. This is their first release under the Rise Records banner, and their first time working with producer Tobias Kuhn. Tobias is better known for producing multiple titles for folk/electronic band Milky Chance, so, it’s bit of a gamble to go with a producer who more often than not is embedded in the electronic music landscape. But it paid off handsomely for the men from Melbourne, Australia.

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