One sentence album reviews (#13)

The Sweet Revenge - Creatures Of Routine (2010): Sounds like: A perfect crossover of Billy Talent and Alkaline Trio 4/5

Light the Fuse and Run - All Your Base Are Belong To Us (2002): noisy and punky screamo. This band summarises my current musical tastes perfectly. 4/5

Letlive - Fake History (2011): It's like Finch. Before they broke up the first time. Of course I love it. 4.5/5

Pour Habit - Got Your Back (2011): A fast and fun punk album. 4/5

ArpLine - Travel Book (2010): Sounds like: Animal Collective, with a lot less weird-ass noises 4/5

Ironhide - Create/Collapse/Repeat (2011): Such good technical metal from an awesome bunch of Brisbane dudes. Amazing production too. 4/5

Dredg - Chuckles and Mr Squeezy (2011): The band name makes me think of msludge etal, but it's cliche soft alternative rock. 2.5/5

Young Widows - In And Out Of Youth And Lightness (2011): Dark post-punk which, to me, seems to channel a hell of a lot of Nick Cave 3.5/5

Raein - Ah, As If (2011): Italian screamo. They do it even better than the French apparently. I still have no idea what they are singing 4/5

Thursday - No Devolucion (2011): it's a more ambient sound, but there's a few songs that channel the heavierside band United Nations 4/5

Between the Buried and Me - The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues EP (2011): 3 songs, 30 minutes of crazy and epic metal, including gypsy circus music. 4/5

Fires of Waco - Old Ghosts Never Sleep (2011): Local band I've seen many times, after hearing this album I finally get the At the Drive-In comparison. 4/5

Deftones - Covers (2011):Recorded over their career, this is surprising as they are beautifully crafted, not heavy covers I was expecting 3.5/5

Incubus - If Not Now, When? (2011): Softer, more like a Brandon Boyd solo album. Some songs have a 1960s Pink Floyd or Neil Young feel. 2.5/5

Jebediah - Kosciuszko (2011): For a 10 year break, these Aussie indie rockers sound like they've barelyskipped a beat. 4/5

Kvelertak - Kvelertak (2010): This Norwegian black metal/hardcore cross over almost reminds me of Refused if they sang in Norwegian. 4.5/5

TV On the Radio - Nine Types Of Light (2011): The first TOTR album where the lead singer's wavering voice doesn't annoy me. Nice indie. 3.5/5

Sum 41 - Screaming Bloody Murder (2011): Less punk and more... My Chemical Romance-esque? But not in a bad way. It's more rounded overall 3/5

Vivian Girls - Share the Joy (2011): Female indie pop, which feels as if it has just fallen into my CD player and my heart direct from 1960. 4/5

Unwritten Law - Swan (2011): It sounds like the Unwritten Law of old, but that's not a good thing. It's like a greatest hits with no hits. 2/5

Title Fight - Shed (2011): Punk with emo cross over, that I sometimes hate, but mostly just love. Feels very gritty. 4/5

Man the Change - Weather the Storm (2011): fun melodic hardcore punk. I like it, and bonus points for it being a free album. 4/5

Smoking Popes - This Is Only A Test (2011): Old/slow punk, but some great song writing. 3.5/5

Panic at the Disco - Vices & Virtue (2011): Fills a weird place between the first 2 albums. Poppy, but not the beatles sound of #2. 3.5/5

Hipster watch: ArpLine

I've recently acknowledged the fact that yes, I am a hipster. Months of denial has seen me mock and criticise hipsters from afar, but like most bigotry, it was just hiding the fact that I identified with it.

(Thank you toothpaste for dinner. I bet you are as much of a hispter as me, the way you mock them)

So now that I've embraced the hipster in me, I'm taking off my ridiculously stupid sunglasses, replacing them with my thick-rimmed reading glasses and I've decided I'll start a new occassionally recurring segment of my blog: Hipster Watch. The idea of this segment will be to try and beat the hipster bandwagon to things. Because let's face it, it's no longer hip when more than 10 people know about it.

The first hipster band is ArpLine.

Arpline "Make It Rain" Nutroaster Studio from VVUSIC on Vimeo.

Let's go through the hipster checklist:

• Synthesizer - check
• From Brooklyn - check (for anyone who's never been there, right now it's as hip as hip gets)
• Ridiculous haircut - check (see the lead singer in the video)
• Plaid - check (lead singer, once again)
• Distorted/changed vocals - check
• Electronica/genre defying mixes - check

Before you've even properly listened to their music, you can just tell straight away they're hipsters.

So what do you need to know about them? Mainly that they're like Animal Collective (the original hipsters' hipster band) but with less weird-ass sounds and more melody. They put out an album last year, entitled Travel Book, and it seems that we're about to get some Australian distro for it. So stay tuned, there will probably be a tour soon where all of the hipsters can stand around, talking and pretending not to enjoy the show at all.

If you want to be more hip than most hipsters by listening to ArpLine, you can grab a free MP3 of their new single Fold Up Like A Piece of Paper right here. You can also go to their website to grab more free MP3s, including covers of bands that we don't know (because that's hip).