Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged pop

Ladyfest South (January 25-28, 2007)

Ladyfest South is always a blast because it is back to back lady talent for a good cause. Ladyfest South 2007 happened over four nights at four venues in Atlanta and featured over fifty music and spoken word acts. This year’s beneficiaries are The Rock N’ Roll Camp for Girls and The Fund for Southern Communities. Thursday January 25, 2007 - Eyedrum Art Space Phat Man Dee from PA is amazing and fun to see. She sports interesting costumes and sings cabaret camp and pop.

City Beach

When I first received this album, I already had preconceived ideas. I thought the music would be terrible and the lyrics even worse. I was actually pleasantly surprised. When I put the disc in and started listening to the music, it was very positive with good beats. The singer’s voice is mellow and she reminds me of such singers as Melissa Ethridge and Sheryl Crow, which are two of my favorites. This is definitely a feel good compilation. It is full of real life lyrics that I’m sure many people could relate with.

Venus

The opening and strongest tracks on Venus. “Venus” and “Now You Know,” from this five-piece band from Ohio are catchy, energetic and fun, setting the atmosphere for the rest of this pop-punk album. As the title implies, the songs are about love, but so much so that it delivers a kind of monotony, which drives the listener away at times. “Blue Coat, Black Hair” reminds me of Billy Talent with its faced-paced, hardcore sound and screaming vocals.

El Perro Del Mar: Live at the Bowery Ballroom (3/1/2007)

Some musicians are primarily recording artists, and others excel when they play live. Because El Perro Del Mar (Swedish singer-songwriter Sarah Assbring) plays quiet, repetitive, melancholy pop songs that are great to listen to when you’re reading or half asleep, I had her pegged as belonging to the former category. However, her recent headlining performance at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC left me pleasantly surprised to find that she has found a way to make her music thrive in a live setting.

From the Decker House

From the Decker House is a brief, pop-ish, countryside-style, storytelling album reminiscent of Bob Dylan ramblings, although not nearly as timeless. The band met in Idlewild, CA in 2004, but now records from the opposite end of the country in New York. This album takes its name from the apparently decrepit Decker House estate in the mountains behind Deposit, NY that the band adopted as a home base for the concoction of this album.

Woke Myself Up

Julie Doiron has always been an artist that seems most at home in my headphones in the dead of winter or early Sunday morning, because of her sad lyrics and quiet melodies. On Woke Myself Up, Doiron’s first album since 2004’s Goodnight Nobody, she reunited with her first band, Eric’s Trip, who broke up over ten years ago.

City Morning Song

City Morning Song is the second solo album from Sarah Shannon, former front woman for shoegaze band Velocity Girl. Her second solo attempt is not filled with the distortion of guitars, but with instruments like the piano, horns, bass guitar and strings. It contains twelve pop tracks that are reminiscent of Carole King’s work.

Frozenstarpalace

As a Milwaukee girl, I was eagerly anticipating hearing Michelle Anthony’s second album, the mini-LP Frozenstarpalace. Anthony recorded it as a document of moving from Milwaukee, WI to Austin, TX, and has described it in interviews as having a “Milwaukee vibe,” despite having been recorded in Milwaukee, Austin, Chicago and Los Angeles. You might think that the record would be uneven, having been recorded at so many different times and places, but that’s not the case.

So Much More

Anyone lucky enough to catch the usage of Brett Dennen’s song “There Is So Much More” on the November 9th episode of Grey’s Anatomy would probably have thought it was sung by some classic singer/songwriter that they should know, but simply could not place the name of.

Gorgeous Enormous

Carolyn AlRoy is a practicing therapist, and her day job obviously inspires some of her lyrics. For example, on the pensive “My First Mistake” she laments, “My first mistake was to make myself small, so that you wouldn’t be jealous at all.” But don’t be scared away from this gem of a pop album, as there are happier moments and a variety of styles.

El Perro del Mar

Listening to El Perro del Mar – a pseudonym for the Swedish singer Sarah Assbring – makes me feel like I should be a character in an early 1960s television show. The chipper, pop melodies, be-bops and sha-la-las that underscore her melancholy lyrics about life and love have earned her comparisons to the Beach Boys and girl groups from the 50s and 60s.

Cryptograms

Cryptograms, Deerhunter’s first album on Kranky, is the product of an extremely tumultuous time in the band’s life. After losing a member, the band tried recording the album in a single day early 2005. Deemed a failure at the time, this session makes up the first half of this album - a discordant, noisy, at times psychedelic tangle of guitars and yelps. “Cryptograms” and “Lake Somerset” take some elements of drone and noise rock and combine them with psychedelic elements, to make them more palatable, but no less interesting.

Murmurs

Upon listening to the debut full-length album by Tokyo, Japan’s Caroline, one is immediately mesmerized by her ability to invite you inwards through mere Murmurs.
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