One Sentence Album Reviews

Because it took me forever to finish my 2011 list, here's the first for the year!

Tennis - Young And Old (2012): another girl/boy duo making dreamy summer tunes; makes me think of pastel polo shirts and country clubs 3/5

Anti-Flag - The General Strike (2012): As always, Anti-Flag make a fun punk album full of catchy hooks and politics. It's damn catchy 4.3/5

Every Time I Die - Ex Lives (2012): typical ETID album: features the same guitar/vocal styles & funny titles but with a more metal edge 4.3/5

Bleeding Through - The Great Fire (2012): This metal album tries hard, but falls short. Especially with its overuse of fake synth violin 3/5

The Mars Volta - Noctorniquet (2012): The poppiest album Omar/Cedric have released yet. Short songs, no spacey solos, understandable lyrics 3.7/5

Caliban - I Am Nemesis (2012): Breakdowns, samples, clean singing parts, swearing. A fairly typical metalcore album 3.2/5

Hank Williams III - Rebel Within (2010): Someon with a hardcore background decided to imitate the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack 4/5

Air - Le Voyage Dans La Lune (2012): accompanying soundtrack to the 1902 movie is a return of form. The music doesn't even need the movie 4.8/5
Sonic Armada may be the song of the year

Quiet Steps - Secular (2012): The screamo influence is largely cast aside on this album, substituted for some great noodly melodies 4/5

Bleeding Knees Club - Nothing To Do (2012): Retro sounding garage rock from the Gold Coast. It's like a 60's surf party! 4/5

Narrows - Painted (2012): Every year there's a dirty, sludgy hardcore album I dig. I'm pretty sure this is it for 2012. 4.2/5

MxPx - Plans Within Plans (2012): A flashback to when I was 16 and pop-punk blared through my car windows as loud as it could go 3.8/5

Sleigh Bells - Reign Of Terror (2012): Not much changed for the 2nd album, except the riffs are more 80's power-metal. Not in a good way 2.3/5

Fanfarlo - Rooms Filled With Light (2012): Delightful indie-pop, but the album lacks a standout wow factor, it'll be forgotten quickly 3.5/5

Fun. - Some Nights (2012): Imagine if you were in a cute romantic (indie) movie, this would be your soundtrack 4/5

Kaiser Chiefs - Start The Revolution Without Me (2012): Unlike their last few albums, they don't sound totally bored. Still not great 2.4/5

Useless ID - Symptoms (2012): The melodies! I find this album so gosh darn catchy in a good pop-punk way 4/5

Lucero - Women & Work (2012): A more upbeat Lucero album, probably thanks to all of the horns. Magnificent whiskey fueled rock still 4.6/5

Ceremony - Zoo (2012): It appears the hardcore and anger is gone, replaced with a brooding almost indie sound. Not what I was expecting 3.3/5

Young Guns -  Bones (2012): an attempt at a big stadium-rock, radio-friendly sound. Meh 2.3/5

Lucero/Dropkick Murphys

It's that time of the year again when I trot out my most over-used picture on the blog (I think this is my fourth time now).


Yes, that's me, the lovely Bek, Ben Nichols and Frank Turner. Last time I used it was for Frank Turner, this time it's for Ben Nichols. Because his band, Lucero, are finally coming out to Australia.

And most surprising of all, they're opening for the Dropkick Murphys.

This should be called the "cigarettes and alcohol" tour I think.

Lucero is a southern alt-country/punk band whose beautiful music just invoke images of long nights in dark bars sipping whiskey.

Unfortunately, a lot of their songs are dark and sad. But gosh, it's just beautiful music.

Dropkick Murphys, of course, are the ultimate beer-in-hand, shoulder-over-another-mates-shoulder shouting-songs-at-the-top-of-your-voices Boston Irish working-class punk band. They have a huge back catalogue of great albums, including their new release, Going Out In Style, which I think may be their best album yet.

This will be a great show in a great venue.

October 19 at the Tivoli. Be there, drink in hand. Watch me fan boy over Lucero before we all sing along to the Dropkicks.

Orgcore

So it turns out there's a subgenre of punk called orgcore, which I've only discovered today. According to wikihow, the look involves band shirts under plaid, beards, getting scruffy and ... crap. That's me.


The music itself is described as a mixture of punk, country, folk and blues. Basically all the things I like!

So it turns out I'm orgcore. As weird as that sounds. So here's some bands to get into orgcore with:

Lucero - More on the country than punk side of things, their song writing is just absoultely amazing.

Hot Water Music - Old school Chicago orgcore. One of the bands that came to define the genre (also playing in December).

Frank Turner - Acoustic punk. Keep an eye out for this guy, he'll be big soon.

The three lead singers of the afore mentioned bands came out and did the ultimate orgcore tour last year, the Revivial Tour. They basically got together (with Tim Barry from Avail) and played acoustic punk for a few hours. The above picture is from that gig. It was amazing. If only I knew that was orgcore at the time...

Against Me! - Their early albums are some of my favourite punk albums ever, not to mention some of the best orgcore.

The Gaslight Anthem - The ultimate orgcore band. They channel a punk Bruce Springsteen to a tee. And they've just released a new free song which covers...

Fake Problems - Their new album, Real Ghosts Caught on Tape, is a little bit more indie, but it's one of my favourites of the year. And also, that's the beauty of orgcore, it mashes everything into it's uniqueness!

There's plenty more bands you can throw into this melting pot of a genre. In fact, a lot of these appear to come from the Naples/Gainsville Florida area. It must be something in the water. This blog: http://carriedouttosea.blogspot.com/search?q=orgcore is a huge fan of orgcore and always puts up new bands.

God bless the country-influence, plaid wearing, gruff and working class punk!