Album Review: The Gold Needles – What’s Tomorrow Ever Done For You? (JEM)
Power Pop Yorkshire band The Gold Needles time-travel back to England of the mid-Sixties when The Beatles were re-inventing popular music from the inside.
Album Review: The Weather Station – Ignorance (Fat Possum)
Toronto-based artist Tamara Lindeman has just produced an early contender for album of the year along with her band The Weather Station.
Album Review: You, Me, Everybody – Southern Sky (Second Hand Records)
A debut album that has its heart in Americana and sounds like it has been fed from the same well that Dylan and especially The Band tapped into in the late Sixties in Woodstock, New York. Traditional Irish and Scottish music adding in ingredients of Jazz, Swing and Blues to make it sound simultaneously contemporary […]
Album Review: The Dead Daisies – Holy Ground (Spitfire Music)
Holy Ground is all about the culture and tradition of Rock music, and this album is a grand celebration of all its fine elements and ingredients. The continuing progression of White Revivalist Pentecostal and American Black Baptist Church music. Holy ground absolutely.
Album Review: Colette Rivers – Memory Lake
Colette Rivers debut album Memory Lake is a multi-layered opus of sound and textures which on the surface have a shimmering, radiant Indie Folk quality. Like Lake Taupo which is the inspiration for the title, still waters reveal a more complexity in the depths.
Album Review: Barry Gibb – Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers Songbook Vol. 1 (Capitol)
Sole surviving Bee Gee Barry Gibb goes country! Or does he? This new album was recorded in Nashville, produced by Dave Cobb and features Keith Urban, Jason Isbell and Dolly Parton.
Album Review: Aaron Frazer – Introducing… (Dead Oceans)
The debut solo album by Aaron Frazer is actually a time vortex where you are transported back to the latter Sixties in America when Soul music was on an artistic plateau. Anyone hooked on Casey Kasem’s American Top Forty in that time will instantly recognise the Motown to Philly Soul to Stax sounds.
Album Review: Passenger – Songs For The Drunk And Brokenhearted (Nettwerk)
When did British singer songwriters start crooning away in such high voices and funny accents? Does it go back as far as the bards with their lutes, or the Bee Gees, or that other guy who I’d rather not say for fear of getting that song stuck in my head who used to drive tanks?
Album Review: Steve Earle – J.T. (New West)
With the new year kicking in, we at The 13th Floor are determined to cover as much new music as possible. Our first entry is this new album by Steve Earle titled J.T.
13th Floor’s Top 10 Albums of 2020
The new year has just begun, so what better way to spend New Years’ Day than to ruminate over last year’s best music?
Album Review: Miley Cyrus – Plastic Hearts (RCA)
This album is a showcase and tour-de-force for Miley Cyrus and her magnificent voice. A major artist prodigy at a young age. Negotiating the myriads pitfalls and Faustian traps that privileged position can bring.
Album Review: The Guilty Hearts – The Guilty Hearts (Voodoo Rhythm Records)
Reissue: First released 2005 Arising from the fertile soil that was Los Angeles Rock’n’Roll Punk of the late Seventies. Offspring of The Cramps, X and more directly The Gun Club and their glorious debut lost masterpiece Fire of Love album.
Album Review: Tom Petty – Wildflowers & All The Rest (Warner)
Weighing in with 7 (count ‘em ) 140g vinyl records and a 60 page booklet this version of Tom Petty’s 1994 solo album, Wildflowers should keep any Petty fan busy or at least serve as a decent door stop.
Album Review: King Ketchup, Special Blend
New Auckland band King Ketchup drop this fiery debut album, intent on levelling everything in their path. The blitz and pyrotechnics of frantic computer games as played by Rick and Morty.
Album Review: Brave Caitlin Smith’s Imaginary Band – You Have Reached Your Destination
Song Poet, Story Singer and Caster of Spells, Caitlin Smith presents a collection of her songs recorded ten years ago. There has been drama, trauma and difficulty. There has also been a journey of healing, redemption and spiritual awakening.
Album Review: Bruce Springsteen – Letter For You (Columbia)
A man out of time, just in time… Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band serve up an album that drips with nostalgia and yet sounds so timely.
Album Review: Dick Move – Chop (1:12 Records)
With the briefest nod to Blitzkreig Bop and Dick Move are off with well-drilled Punk attack riffs and surgical strikes of youthful angst and just general rage and fury.
Album Review: Public Enemy, What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down? (Enemy Records Ltd)
Hostilities are opened from the first line of Public Enemy’s Pandemic Year album Not pretty, slaps you in the head and kicks your butt. But it also completes an American Classic trilogy of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Fear of a Black Planet. State of the Union/ Shut the […]
Album Review: Wax Chattels – Clot (Flying Nun Records)
A tense visceral experience with a strange beauty and charm is Clot the album. From the Auckland noise merchants and music mercenaries that is the threesome Wax Chattels.
Album Review: Marilyn Manson, We Are Chaos (Loma Vista Recordings)
Marilyn Manson is one of those artists that weather changes in musical fashion and manages to remain relevant. He started way back in 1989 as Marilyn Manson & The Spooky Kids. Since then he has released 11 studio albums. We are Chaos is one of his best since Mechanical Animals.