|

Click here to expand and collapse the player

Rock Browse All

eMusic Reviews View All

Daughter, If You Leave

2013 | Label: Glassnote

The London trio Daughter usually gets filed under folk or indie-folk, but their music bears no traces of strum-and-stomp barnstorming or campfire confessional. The band interprets folk the same way Jason Molina records do: dusky guitars, spare arrangements, sparse beats and anguished vocals thrust into the spotlight. Daughter’s full-length debut, If You Leave, softens this stark foundation with chilly atmospheric effects, lyrics haunted by romantic angst and rebirth, and Elena Tonra’s low-lit voice, which is as hazy and tortured as Chan Marshall sounded on early Cat Power records. The results… more »

Iggy & the Stooges, Ready to Die

2013 | Label: Fat Possum / The Orchard

Few albums are so misleadingly titled as Ready to Die. The first release in 40 years under the “Iggy & the Stooges” banner sounds nothing like resignation; its taut 10 songs — clocking in at an old-school 34 minutes — constitute a genuine rebirth of a sneering, vital band, defiant as ever. Iggy Pop’s voice retains its feral power on searing opener “Burn” and lower-middle class anthem “Job,” while his deep croon conveys poignancy on the woebegone closer “The Departed.” Not-so-secret weapon James Williamson, retired from his job at Sony,… more »

Phoenix, Bankrupt!

2013 | Label: Glassnote

What Phoenix does better than just about any current band is combine the euphoria of a raucous rock ‘n’ roll show with the surgical exactitude of studio-crafted dance music. Mixing the obstreperousness of old-fashioned guitar/bass/drums/keys grooves with hyper-precise digital calibration, this supremely, this supremely French foursome remains the epitome of rock-disco dialectic.

Their new one picks up where 2009′s mainstream breakthrough Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix left off, maintaining that album’s crowd-pleasing formula while accentuating the group’s gentle waywardness. The lyrics, for example, are often nonsensical: “Victory lap, formal with feathery eyes/ Dating… more »

Laura Stevenson, Wheel

2013 | Label: Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

A question lurks in the background of Laura Stevenson’s Wheel like a party guest invited out of obscure but unbreakable obligation: Once you realize you are going to die, what are you supposed to do about the rest of your life?

From a distance, Stevenson’s songs seem to tally up the standard frayed relationships and rocky familyscapes; up close, in flashes of quiet brutality, she makes the stakes clear. “There was a time when we believed that we could measure out a line just how we wanted it, so we could… more »

eMusic Radio

1

The Mixtape

By eMusic Editorial Staff, eMusic Contributor

This Month: Satanic Folk Songs The dark (but not explicitly Satanic) songs of Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits inspired a wave of British '80s martial folk bands, which incorporated elements of early industrial music with acoustic folk strumming, militant beats and lyrics about death, the apocalypse and the devil. With black candles positioned in a pentagram around our speakers, eMusic delved into the history of evil, politically incorrect and murderous music to assemble the 13… more »

Recommended Radio

View All