reviews from a rainy friday

raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers: Wow, we have a fucking champ. Jack White teams up with Brendan Benson, and the bassist and drummer from the Greenhornes. Not surprising Jim Jarmusch directs their first video (meg & jack were in coffee and cigarettes, and the greenhornes had a few tracks on the broken flowers soundtrack). Clocking in at just over a half an hour, there's not enough time to lose interest in this wicked catchy disc. It's very white stripesy, but with a fuller sound, and brendan sharing vocal duties. Look for an official May release, or look elsewhere.

snow patrol - Eye's Open: And we have a didn't even finish the race loser. Total shite floating on the teppid sea of the adult alternative wasteland. This is horrible, insulting almost. I must have these guys confused with another band, because I was expecting something else, something inspiring maybe, or at the very least tolerable. I'd rather listen to james blunt.

ms john soda - Notes and the Like: Harmless female glitch twee, which has enough blissfully mesmerizing moments to make it a good spin.

aloha - Some Echoes: in a nutshell, we could call this some seBADoh. It has an uncanny likeness to the original lo-fiers more high gloss material, which kind of makes me want to throw on some of that 'jason, lou, eric' asthetic that inspired this release. Follow?

fiery furnaces - Bitter Tea: I can't stand these guys for more than a song or two without some sort of half-violent reaction (with the exception of that 'beat me/banged me' song from EP which I caned compulsively one weekend). The 'gimmic' on this disc is all sorts of backwards tape loops. Some clever dan actually took the time to flip them back in the right direction. The result was about as boring as when the bits were backwards.

irving - Death in the Garden, Blood on the Flower: A little all over the road stylistically. We hear some synthy cure-ish leanings mixed with elephant 6-ish 60's pop. I picked it up for track 7.

-seven, seven eleven-