COLIN SNEED Empty and Open All Night Bull City Records Presents Durham transplant Colin Sneed has married a mischievous literary sensibility to an uncanny knack for big-ticket hooks and snarling guitars, a cocktail he renders with the insouciant panache of a gutter-rat intellectual. These proclivities date back to Sneed’s days fronting the Oxford, Mississippi, power-pop […]
Timothy Bracy
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Record Review: On His Solo Debut, Mike VM Is The Happiest Man on Earth
MIKE VM The Happiest Man on Earth Suah Sounds For the past several years, New Jersey-born Chapel Hill transplant Michael Venutolo-Mantovani has served as frontman for the raggedly lovable Everymen, a commendably unhinged garage and blue-eyed soul outfit. The band’s take-no-prisoners live sets and general sense of abandon narrowly obscured an attention to cerebral songcraft […]
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Record Review: Estrangers Strike Gold on Gilded Palms
ESTRANGERS Gilded Palms Phuzz Records A still-young band with an already impressive track record of generating memorable, gently mind-bending psych rock, Winston-Salem’s Estrangers have long appeared on the verge of a career-making breakthrough. That moment has arrived. As a profoundly gratifying distillation of the group’s manifold strengths, the group’s new LP, Gilded Palms, makes for […]
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Record Review: Happy Abandon’s Debut, Facepaint, Marks an Ambitious Start
HAPPY ABANDON Facepaint Schoolkids Records Reminiscent of both the fussy prog of early King Crimson and the celestial, chorus-driven heights of So-era Peter Gabriel, the talented Chapel Hill three-piece Happy Abandon boasts a full tool kit of influences ranging from folk-rock, psych-pop, electronica, and avant jazz. The fun of experiencing the band’s fine full-length debut, […]
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Record Review: Friends and Fans of Big Star Commit Their Love of Third to Tape
Contending with legend is always a dangerous gambit, and few albums in the rock tradition possess a deeper lore or more singular pull then Big Star’s half-abandoned, fully astonishing third album. First released in 1978, it’s a harrowing and beautiful journey through the rapidly fracturing psyche of a young Alex Chilton. Originally tracked in 1974 […]