[xrr rating=3.5/5]Your enjoyment of Fort Lean’s self-titled debut EP may be related to how curious you are about what a cheerful Walkmen might sound like. With dreamy washed-out guitars cozying up next to crooning vocals and big, reverb drenched drums, you could be forgiven for thinking the Walkmen had changed their name, but it’s a happy-go-lucky feeling that makes the …

[xrr rating=3.75/5] Since his 2008 debut Horn The Unicorn, Ty Segall and his raucous backing band have slowly been making a name for themselves, evolving their sound ever so slightly with each new release. Over a span of three years and four full-lengths, he has managed to focus his gritty, lo-fi beginnings and intense live shows into confident, controlled records, …

[xrr rating=3.0/5]Treefight for Sunlight’s debut album A Collection of Vibrations for Your Skull (eponymously titled in the U.K.) is gifted and promising but conflicted. Populated by unique psych jewels and flat ordeals, it’s sublime in places and slightly dull in others. But that isn’t to say the Danish quartet don’t make it interesting. Collective co-vocalists Christian Rohde Lindinger (bass), Morten …

[xrr rating=4.25/5] Hello Sadness is already being described as a “breakup album,” a term that brings to mind decades of beautiful tradition from Bob Dylan to Beck and, at its worst, songs of overwrought emotion and intense bouts of melodramatic heart-rending and/or soul-searching. Whether that term fully applies to the latest effort from Los Campesinos! is open to debate – …

[xrr rating=5/5] “Reissue! Repackage! Repackage!/ Reevaluate the songs!/ Double-pack with a photograph/ Extra track and a tacky badge.” Ah, but let’s not be too hard on Morrissey. No doubt when he penned these lyrics all the way back in 1987 as part of Strangeways, Here We Come, he did not envision that one day the vulgar picture being painted would …

[xrr rating=4/5] I despise the beach. I hate the sensation of scalding sand between my toes. I dislike the salty, seaweed-inflected odor that stays with me for days after leaving the sandy shore. Exposure to unadulterated sunlight makes me sneeze. Thus, it takes a small miracle for me to willingly listen to and enjoy a beach-combing, surf-pop inspired record in …

[xrr rating=4/5] Trevor Powers, aka Youth Lagoon, is a young multi-instrumentalist who retreated into solitude to record an album on themes of youth, nostalgia and heartache. A brief description such as this would not lead one to believe that his full-length debut is anything particularly original. Yet Powers’ bedroom project stands apart from others, as he clearly needed to make …

Revisit is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a second look. John Cusack tricked those poor bastards in that “I will now sell five copies of The Three EPs by the Beta Band” scene. With that obligatory High Fidelity reference out of the way, it’s important to point out that the upbeat and head-nodding hook from …

[xrr rating=4.25/5] A good number of modern indie bands, pumping out what could most loosely be described as experimental folk, hone in on a unique trademark style on their debut that garners all kinds of critical and popular attention. Many of these bands then either retread that same ground on subsequent albums (not necessarily to ill effect, as with Fleet …