Estelle
Stylish Brit crafts hip-hop soul, suffers no fools.
By Stacey Anderson 03.26.08 12:47 PM
Estelle Swaray just can't understand the pickup techniques of American men. But the recently transplanted Londoner is learning fast. "They talk so much. By the time they get your number, you forgot what their name was," groans the chic 28-year-old, complaining about the "negging" tricks picked up in Neil Strauss' seduction primer, The Game.
Murder By Death, 'Red of Tooth and Claw' (Vagrant)
Rev up the stagecoach and take a trip back to the mythical West.
By Stacey Anderson 03.03.08 11:40 PM
In this Indiana quartet's young, grizzled hearts, it's always "Spring Break 1899." They brawl like Johnny Cash's cellmates or dreamily swoon like Nick Drake, stomping saloon floorboards in 4/4 time as grand strings fade into high noon. But literate, wantonly nostalgic country rock is a tough sell these days.
Rivers Cuomo, 'Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo' (Geffen)
The tangled tale of a modern-rock enigma.
By Stacey Anderson 02.18.08 9:59 PM
Rivers Cuomo may be a wimp, a delight, or a sociopath guiding us like Sims through his own personal four-chord experiment -- we just can't be sure. As our most reticent rock star, he's transitioned from nebbish savant with scraped knees and frayed synapses to professional dispatcher of blank, soaring melodies.
Tender Forever, 'Wider' (K)
Lo-fi French expat songbird gets a worm caught in her throat.
By Stacey Anderson 01.29.08 9:13 PM
Bordeaux-born Melanie Valera chased her libido through 2005's sappy The Soft and the Hardcore, and now she sounds un petit disgusted with herself. Her second album is still rife with musings about lovers and secret kisses, but her lilting voice carries a new off-key harshness that complicates matters. Combined with brisk piano and twee synth, the self-loathing-Siouxsie act almost works.
Dengue Fever, 'Venus on Earth' (M80)
It's a holiday in Cambodia, and nobody's dressed in black!
By Stacey Anderson 01.18.08 11:17 PM
Turns out, there's a lot to be said for dancing on Pol Pot's grave. In 2005, these Los Angeles-based rockers made history as the first Westerners to tour Cambodia since the dictator's bloody regime, and that triumph lends a visceral confidence to their third album.
The Warlocks, 'Heavy Deavy Skull Lover' (Tee Pee)
No sorcery is strong enough to raise these songs from the dead.
By Stacey Anderson 01.18.08 4:17 AM
Despite the disarmingly stupid album title (sounds like a necrophile's eHarmony page), the Warlocks are more funereal than ever. The Los Angeles quartet (halved from the lineup of 2005's Surgery) load their pinwheeling psychedelic rock with twice the distorted strings and percussion, but the outcome is sluggishly unrealized.
