Music

Beachwood Sparks

Review: Beachwood Sparks’ The Tarnished Gold

Beachwood Sparks: The Tarnished GoldBeachwood Sparks: The Tarnished Gold (Sub Pop, 6/26/12)

“Forget the Song”

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Beachwood Sparks was at once a throwback and, from a 2012 perspective, ahead of the wave. In the early aughties, the band of former college-radio chums single-handedly revived a laidback, country-rocking West Coast sound famously pioneered in the late ’60s by Gram Parsons and The Flying Burrito Brothers. The band’s spacier second album, Once We Were Trees, flirted with psychedelia. And by 2003, it had said its peace—and it was left to the likes of Fleet Foxes to win over the indie masses with CSNY harmonies and flower-power earnestness in folk-rock 2.0, all territory the Sparks had well under control.

Fiona Apple

Review: Fiona Apple’s The Idler Wheel…

Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel...Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel… (Epic)

With a penchant for varying her production style at each stage of her career, Fiona Apple once again sets out for new sonic terrain on her fourth album, The Idler Wheel. A partial return to the acoustic-based instrumentation of her 1996 debut, Tidal, Apple’s new material nonetheless rarely revisits that album’s courtly brand of jazz pop. Instead, The Idler Wheel veers much closer to what Apple might sound like if she landed somewhere between modern experimental theater, the unabashed pomp of Broadway, and the bustle of a frontier saloon or Prohibition-era speakeasy.

Every Time I Die

Video: Every Time I Die’s “I Suck (Blood)”

Every Time I Die: Ex Lives (Epitaph, 3/6/12)

Earlier this year, NY metalcore outfit Every Time I Die returned with Ex Lives, its first full-length since 2009. The video for its latest single, “I Suck (Blood),” is a disturbing exploration of Stockholm Syndrome-esque victim-hood and attraction. Naturally, it involves excessive stalking and gifts containing once-beating hearts.

Dying Fetus

Review: Dying Fetus’ Reign Supreme

Dying Fetus: Reign SupremeDying Fetus: Reign Supreme (Relapse, 6/19/12)

“Subjected to a Beating”

[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Dying_Fetus_Subjected_to_a_Beating.mp3|titles=Dying Fetus: “Subjected to a Beating”]

This, the seventh full-length from Maryland’s Dying Fetus, has the distinction of being the death-metal outfit’s first album to have the same lineup as its predecessor since its debut, Purification Through Violence, was released in 1996. Despite the many member shifts, however, Dying Fetus’ style hasn’t changed much. The band’s signature mixture of technicality, speed, and groove has spawned countless imitators and definitely helped — for better or worse — the invention of metalcore.