@apartofhim's Top 20 of 2014 - #13 Cloud Nothings "Here And Nowhere Else"

I have a feeling that this a one of those albums that will only get better and better with time and with each spin.

Here's what STEREOGUM's Tom Breihan had to say about the album:

Listen to the god damn drums. There’s a lot to like about Here And Nowhere Else, the new Cloud Nothings album: The snot-punk hooks, the scraped-out guitar textures, the overwhelming refusal to acknowledge any musical influences from anytime after, say, 1997. But those drums are the best thing about Here And Nowhere Else. Cloud Nothings drummer Jason Gerycz hits his drums like they just reminded him of everything that’s happened to every Cleveland professional sports team in the last 50 years, and he does it with serious speed and timing, at an absolutely relentless pace. The songs are good on their own, but Gerycz’s playing effectively straps a rocket to them. And as strong as the songs might be, I can’t think of a great rock album since Songs For The Deaf that would suffer this much if you took away the drummer and replaced him with some technically proficient schlub from the back of a Guitar Center. Gerycz’s playing has personality. He never sounds like he’s just waiting around for the chance to go apeshit while playing fills, but when he gets that chance, you need to get the fuck out of his way. This is exciting drumming, drumming with a sense of joy to it. And given that frontman Dylan Baldi never shows anything approaching joy, it’s a good thing he has Gerycz around to force his songs to sprint. Gerycz is the one element that takes what could be a self-pitying wallow and transforms it into a kickass rock album. And a kickass rock album is exactly what it is. Read the rest at STEREOGUM.

@apartofhim's Top 20 of 2014 - #14 Vic Ruggiero "THIS"

By far THIS is Ruggiero's best solo work. He's a modern-day singer of a culture ever struggling.

Here's what Paste Magazine's Patrick Flanary had to say about THIS:

The critic Robert Palmer once wrote that blues is “something of a gumbo”; the same can be said of Ruggiero’s one-man show. He sings of trust and paranoia, love and war, senility and surveillance—often in the same song. And, just as seamlessly, he rolls from covering Jimmy Reed’s “Bright Lights, Big City” and The Rolling Stones’ “Under My Thumb” to his own rockabilly, soul, punk-folk, and boogie-woogie originals. “He’s a throwback, he’s really cut from a classic cloth,” Ara Babajian, The Slackers’ drummer since 2002, told me from a tour stop in San Francisco. “He inhabits the dark space between the notes, the place where all the swing and magic happens.” 

Read the rest at Paste Magazine. 

@apartofhim's Top 20 of 2014 - #15 We Were Promised Jetpacks "Unraveling"

The Glasgow band's third LP doesn't disappoint, even for those fans of other Scott-Indie-Rock fans who have highland standards set by the likes of Frightened Rabbit. 

Here's what PopMatters' Geoff Nelson had to say about the album:

Scotland’s We Were Promised Jetpacks never shied from making big room music. Getting their start opening for countrymen Frightened Rabbit, the band reared itself on the grey capitulations and resolutions that lay strewn across landscapes of the heart. Unlike their colleagues in Frightened Rabbit, We Were Promised Jetpacks sought not the most crushing turn of phrase with which to stab their listener’s innards but obliterating arrangement and dynamic shifts. The first Jetpacks’ single was the ironically titled shout-along “Quiet Little Voices”, with guitars and backing vocals emerging in the chorus with storm surge intentions. If Frightened Rabbit was a punch in the gut, this was a cross to the jaw. We Were Promised Jetpacks rely on these moments. The final movement of “It’s Thunder and It’s Lightening”, a more apt title, explodes with snare hits as the first track on their debut album, 2009’s These Four Walls.

Read the rest at PopMatters.

@apartofhim's Top 20 of 2014 - #16 Get Set Go "Here Be Dragons"

Band front man and song writer Mike TV is really good at writing catchy pop tunes. Don't believe me? This is the second LP he wrote and recorded in 2014. Both of which will have you humming melodies through out the whole day. But there is nothing like going to a Get Set Go show.

Mike TV stopped into Death Ray Comics this year and did an impromptu show with Sebastian Bach. It was one of the special moments that only a few people experienced, but a moment that will be with me forever. Since you weren't there, here's the soundtrack to that memorable night.

@apartofhim's Top 20 of 2014 - #17 Rancid "...Honor Is All We Know"

image via Wikipedia

Rancid has been spacing out the release of their albums... and the wait is totally worth it!

Here's what The AV Club's Jonah Bayer had to say about the album:

At this point in its career Rancid is essentially the modern-day equivalent of Social Distortion in the sense that it isn’t so much a punk band anymore as it is an institution to be occasionally revisited. People go to the group’s shows to hear hits like “Salvation” and “Ruby Soho,” and newer songs are more of a courtesy to the band than something the audience is actually clamoring for. (To further that analogy, most hardcore Social Distortion fans would be hard-pressed to name any original songs post-1996’s White Light, White Heat, White Trash.) 

However, while the group’s eighth studio album …Honor Is All We Know sounds predictably like Rancid, it also manages to stand on its own as a testament to the band’s ability to continue crafting lasting anthems. Opener “Back Where I Belong” makes it sound as though Rancid just finished playing Saturday Night Live last week instead of 19 years ago. With Matt Freeman’s nimble-fingered bass playing leading the charge, the two-minute rocker silences cynics via guitarist-vocalist Tim Armstrong’s instantly recognizable sneer, soaring harmonies, and an unwavering backbeat courtesy of the band’s latest addition, Branden Steineckert (who has still been in Rancid for eight years now). Read the rest at The AV Club.

@apartofhim's Top 20 of 2014 - #18 Can't Stop Won't Stop "Lyricless, Pt.1"

An instrumental album from the good-time party-anthem hip-hop group that is extremely encouraging about using their work for your own creative endeavors. The album brings enough funk to keep your head bobbing, but isn't stanky with the funk as hip-hop beats carry the rhythm.

This instrumental album will be a candy store for indie film makers looking for the perfect track with up-beat funk-hop as the bed. They really do want you to use their music!

Post by Can't Stop Won't Stop.

@apartofhim's Top 20 of 2014 - #19 Midnight Faces "The Fire Is Gone"

A light throwback to 80's power pop with riffs and melodies that could have been lifted directly from Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook demo cassettes.

Here's what Less Lee Moore of Pop Shifter had to say about the album:

But if you think Midnight Faces are just another wanna-be shoegaze band, think again. The soaring, joyous “Hold Tight” veers into actual power pop territory, with a chorus that could easily fit in amongst Taylor Hanson’s finest, while the whistling melody of “This Time” is ridiculously infectious. - Read the rest at Pop Shifter.

Download The Fire Is Gone.

Top 20 Albums of 2014 - #20 White Lung "Deep Fantasy"

Feminist post-punk/hardcore done so perfectly it becomes about being a human and not a gender.

Here's what Pitchfork's Ian Cohen had to say about the album:

White Lung aren’t subtle—but then again, neither is the doorman who assumes every woman with a band is either a groupie or the merch girl. Nor is your average comments section in response to just about any article posted about a female artist. Nor are the standards of physical beauty, relationship dynamics, and personal happiness promulgated by pop culture. Nor is drug addiction. Nor is the #notallmen hashtag. Nor is questioning Sky Ferreiraabout how much her breasts are responsible for her success, nor are authorities liable to ask “what were you wearing” to every accuser of sexual assault. White Lung’s bracing third LP Deep Fantasy is a product of its environment, that environment being “the real world in 2014,” filled with people who refuse to be a part of the solution because they won’t even admit there’s a problem. 

So, White Lung are not subtle. But Deep Fantasy is definitely savvy, ensuring its staunch ideals are delivered by a riveting, relatable frontwoman and 22 minutes of vicious, compact musicianship and addictive melody. It’s an uncompromising feminist punk record that can be grasped by anyone who finds themselves compelled by kickass rock music and basic human decency... Read more at Pitchfork.com

The Sculptor - Rating/Review

On February 5, 2015, Scott McClouds newest graphic novel, The Sculptor, goes on sale. Do yourself a favor, make sure you have pre-ordered this book. Because once word gets out, they will sell - fast!

I sat trying to write a review after finishing the book... This is what I came up with:

I've been starring at my screen for almost an hour; I type half a sentence, reflect more on "The Sculptor," and then delete it and try again. I don't know how to articulate how masterfully McCloud tells this story through a medium that obviously means so much to him.

When the validity of the Arts is ever questioned, it's works like "The Sculptor," that we raise proclaiming  McClouds' own words, "And life without it -- it's not enough."

I fully expect this book to win all the awards, deservedly.

Think of it this way, if "American Gods" conceived a child with "Blankets," you would end up with "The Sculptor."

This is by far the best thing I've read in a very, very long time.

Teen Titans: Earth One - Rating/Review

Available 11-19-2014

TEEN TITANS EARTH ONE HC VOL 01

DC COMICS

(W) Jeff Lemire (A) Terry Dodson & Various (CA) Rachel Dodson, Terry Dodson

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In the vein of Superman: Earth One and Batman: Earth One, DC is also publishing an updated take on its angsty adolescents heros, the Teen Titans.

For the Superman and Batman Earth One titles, DC brought out the big guns, using all-star writers J. Michael Straczynski and Geoff Johns respectively. Unlike the two flag-ship character origin stories of EARTH ONE, Teen Titans is scribed by Jeff Lemire, a writer known for standing on the edges of the traditional DC story-lines (i.e. Animal Man, Green Arrow).

Lemire's creator-owned work has established him as the go-to-guy for stories of adolescents with a dark twist (see his award winning series Sweet Tooth). So readers familiar with Lemire's previous work will carry and expectation of weird into these pages.\

Though reader's expectations may be different than what is delivered between the gutters. While this is a very different take on the origin of the Teen Titans, it feels as though DC editorial had a strong idea for the story before it was given to Lemire.

Without spoiling the experience of reading, what is well-written, well-drawn a teen-angst super-hero origin story, I'll say that the story feels like the Superboy origin was put into a blender with MARVEL's The Runaways.
I liked it and give it 3.5/5 stars.

The art is great. Dodgson's work is perfect for the story. His style has just a hint of anime to it, that I think many young-adult readers will feel comforting, especially if they aren't regular tights-and-capes comic readers.

Teen Titans fans are diehards. I doubt that this book will please the fanboys and fangirls. I do think this is an original take on a group of characters that have forever been haphazardly thrown together. What Lemire and his team did right, is give these characters a reason to be together, a reason that stands independent from the "put all the sidekicks on a team" reason of the past.

Trent's Rating: 2.5/4 ATOMIC BETA MeV's