Opinz

Ben Kweller – Changing Horses

Hard line alt-rocker Ben Kweller switches things up on his latest effort Changing Horses and while the result makes for a nice listen, it’s no more interesting or significant than any other alt-rock-t0-alt-country album ever released, and if you’re looking to fill that alt-rock-to-alt-country hole in your music library you’d be better served checking out something like Howl by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club that shows a little more personality and feels more like an album created out of passion than one done as an interesting experiment.
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Peter Bjorn and John – Living Thing

There are only two tracks on Peter Bjorn and John’s latest album that’ll remind you a whole lot of those radio-friendly songs on 2006’s “Young Folks”-spawning Writer’s Block (one of which features a chorus of “Hey, shut the fuck up, boy! / You’re starting to piss me off!”, meaning you probably won’t hear it on the radio any time soon) but you probably won’t miss them much: Living Thing is icier and much more concerned with complex, 80’s style dance beats than surf-y guitar riffs, but there’s still a whole lot of sunny pop here to warm you up – particularly on the whimsical “Blue Period Picasso”, the Vampire Weekend-reminiscent “I Want You!” and the just-damn-perfect title track.

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Pearl Jam – Ten (Deluxe Edition)

In addition to the remastered original album which helped usher in an entire movement in rock music, the deluxe edition of Pearl Jam’s Ten includes a true gem – a DVD of the band’s MTV Unplugged performance (although not including songs performed but not aired in the original broadcast), a curious oddity – a complete remix of the album by Brendan O’Brien (which brings out a few new sounds but ultimately offers little new and only begs the question why anyone felt it was necessary), and a few treasures – a few demos including “State of Love and Trust” and “Breath” and the pseudo-new “Brother”; missing is a more comprehensive collection of B-sides and rarities (several were released on the Lost Dog compilation but they would have been perfect for this), more comprehensive album liner notes (all that’s included is some artwork and photos of knickknacks; even the lyrics included in the original album have been removed) and maybe a concert performance of the album (or an audio disc of the Unplugged show)…the new additions are nice but in the end you can’t help but feel it would be more complete with some more complementary material for such a stellar album. More »

DOOM – Born Like This

One can imagine that if it hadn’t been 3 years since the now MF-less DOOM’s last release, Born Like This would be more satisfying, but his style of hook-less, stream of consciousness rhymes (“smack the thin grin off the chin for crack smokin’ / DDT the first bar leave the track backbroken / chrome grown men doin’ business with Anglo-Saxan men / lackin’ swing but that banjo so relaxin’ as the wax spin”) and unconventional beats (“That’s That” features a wonderfully corny violin sample) hasn’t changed much in that time, besides a newly strengthened sense of social awareness (the album takes it’s title from a grim Charles Bukowski poem sampled at the beginning of “Cellz”); still, the man is a better MC than most out there and the same old DOOM is better than no DOOM at all.

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Dan Deacon – Bromst

Dan Deacon’s follow-up to his 2006 breakthrough Spiderman of the Rings seems to operate within the same range of building, pulsing, bizarre beats, twinkly, toy-like sounds and manipulated vocals and samples , but utilizes them in a way that’s altogether more mature and sincere about what it’s doing – the tracks are deceptively complex and brilliant in the way they continually build, from the strangely contemplative, eight minute “Snookered” to the entrancingly epic finale “Get Older”.

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Abe Vigoda – Reviver

Reviver is the new EP from this L.A.-based band in which they take their sound into slower and more dissonant territory than their propulsive, “tropical punk” debut, Skeleton: unfortunately Skeleton wasn’t shockingly unique enough to separate it from the countless other bands attaching new adjectives to the word “punk” these days and this release doesn’t really help – the songs are passable but one hopes that Abe Vigoda manages to produce something more impressive on their next album.

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