http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews Album Reviews Thu, 15 Jul 2010 22:42:49 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en XL Recordings have got a great reputation - so when I heard that this Uk ex gun-crime prisoner had been signed, I was excited that it may well be the advent of a new coming of age for British hip hop. But in reality and sadly, I have to report ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/16/giggs-let-em-ave-it-xl-recordings/ ANDREW'S ALBUM OF THE WEEK I was just thinking, while listening to this, the debut and much anticipated album from Brooklyn based duo Sleigh Bells that, logically, if two things are opposite to each-other, when placed side by side if must be false then that both things are true. But when ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/sleigh-bells-treats-liberator-music/ MATTHEW'S ALBUM OF THE WEEK Two things can happen when you put a bunch of talented friends with separately rewarding careers in a room to record an album together. One: it comes out sounding like less than the sum of its parts (...Monsters of Folk?) and Two: it comes out sounding ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/barb-barb-new-adventure-liberation/ In the past wee while we've started, I think, to witness pop music's reclaimation and redefinition as artists regain control of making pop music. Perhaps a driving force behind this new renaissance of pop music is the shifted landscape pop music has found itself in - and the pop music ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/robyn-body-talk-pt-1-konichiwa-modular/ Initially this solo album from Bloc Party's frontman was to herald as just a sabbatical, but over the weekend Kele Okereke said he "used to be in Bloc Party" at Glastonbury - and of course every British music journalist leapt upon that. The Boxer is clearly a step away ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/kele-the-boxer-wichita-recordings-shock/ Instead of simply making a sophomore album, Danish five piece The Kissaway Trail who is fronted by a combination of Wayne Coyne and Win Butler, decided it would be far more appropriate to capture those moments when you are falling back from total and utter despair into a momentary euphoric ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/the-kissaway-trail-sleep-mountain-speak-spell-inertia/ Building your house upon the sand is - according to ancient wisdom - not a very sensible idea. The wise man built his house upon the rock, apparently. The Drums have employed their own brand of wisdom and built their house to sit halfway across the rock (the rock in ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/the-drums-the-drums-moshi-moshi/ For a pony with essentially one trick, Ratatat surely have galloped at a decent stride. Four albums in, and somehow it's still interesting. Their last record, LP3, saw the duo of Evan Mast and Mike Stroud expand their horizons a little, and LP4 parts the curtains of experimentation wider still. ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/ratatat-lp4-xl-recordings/ As Season Three of this increasingly ridiculous (and I use that word with the utmost respect and giggling excitement for the NEW SEASON) and beyond-dramatic supernatural show begins, here is the timely release of the compiled musical highlights from Season Two - fourteen killer tunes from artists that range from ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/true-blood-music-from-the-hbo-original-series-volume-2-elektra/ I have to say, as yet, I have totally avoided / missed (the verb fluctuates depending on personal perspective) the whole Twilight Saga - despite many many assurances of it's total camp goodness. I also have to say that they do manage to put together some pretty sweet offerings as ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/various-artists-the-twilight-saga-eclipse-atlantic/ This Californian quartet is the sophomore effort from a group who have lately been making the kind of waves that boogie boarders just love. After touring with the likes of MGMT, Death Cab For Cutie, and Yeasayer, with forthcoming dates with the Flaming Lips, Grizzly Bear, and Broken Bells, you ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/the-morning-benders-big-echo-rough-trade/ Because fronting garage-soul outfit Darker My Love, joining the Strange Boys, and playing on the Fall's Reformation Post TLC just wasn't enough for Tim Presley, he's gone and created himself a solo side-project called White Fence. Delving into the grimy pages of psychedelic music throughout history, White Fence is the ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/white-fence-white-fence-woodsist/ Melbourne's Midnight Juggernauts fly in the face of many of their 'indie-tronic' Australian contemporaries - choosing perhaps a darker palette of emotions to draw upon in making their music. Their 2007 debut long player was suitably titled Dystopia - which was strangely darkly euphoric. Now with The Crystal Axis there's ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/midnight-juggernauts-the-crystal-axis-siberia-inertia/ Chris Cudby and Daif Kent have been bemusing and amazing Auckland crowds for years with their lo-fi packaging-taped together gear, which has ranged, over the years, from 1980s vintage keyboards to children's toys to Christmas lights to prams and walking frames - but interestingly, it's only recently that the ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/golden-axe-fantasy-footwork-self-release/ Virginia's Jack Tatum could be any other young fellow, except that when he's in his bedroom he's churning out dreamy and heart rending pop tunes to bring the saddest (like the emotional type of sad, not the sad that describes, say, an older man hitting on a sparkling eyed teenage ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/wild-nothing-gemini-spunk/ This is The Roots ninth album - and it's, I think, the best they have done since 2002's Phrenology. How I Got Over by The Roots is a hip-hop album that transcends it's own genre. Not in a 'this is a future classic, therefore it's genre is not important' kind ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/the-roots-how-i-got-over-def-jam/ Having won me over with their self-titled 2007 debut, it's was with a wintry grin that I received the Broken Heartbreakers brand new record. Based around the songwriting partnership of Rachel Bailey and John Guy Howell, Wintersun is a certified group effort, building in a permanent rhythm section (ex-Verlaines bassist ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/the-broken-heartbreakers-wintersun-self-released/ Doing for gender confusing band names what the Mint Chicks once did, the all-girl trio of Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Randall Meath, aka Mountain Man, certainly sing a beautiful song. The still-young trio have opted to waive any instrumentation other than a sparsely plucked acoustic guitar, and ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/mountain-man-made-the-harbor-spunk/ Somehow this Spanish four piece have taken the flavors of 1990s Italian Disco, techno and house and added some sprinklings of some secret herbs and spices that I really can't put my finger on to make an album that is, cleverly both derivative and yet better than it's inspirations. It's ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/delorean-subiza-remote-control-true-panther-sounds/ Lyrically Tono of Tono and the Finance Company is, as my friend and esteemed colleague Matthew Crawley said, the Morrissey of contemporary New Zealand music. His songs are bittersweet with salient observations and inspirations from the everyday. He manages to take what we all see but observe it the way ... http://cheeseontoast.co.nz/wp/reviews/2010/07/06/tono-and-the-finance-company-fragile-thing-self-released/