The Killers: Battleborn (Review)

The Killers’ lead singer Brandon Flowers is nothing if not a storyteller. Going all the way back to the songs on The Killers’ first album, Hot Fuss, Flowers’ lyrics have told the stories of guys hustling to get androgynous looking girls’ numbers at the local club, obsessive compulsive (almost stalkerish) lovers on the outside and a girl named Jenny who was a friend of his. On Sam’s Town, the stories kept coming about girls who pine for “beautiful boys” to come and rescue them, even if they “didn’t look like Jesus.” On The Killers’ new album, Battle Born, Flowers keeps up the penchant for storytelling. This time out though, the music that The Killers composed as a band fits his stories more completely than it ever has.

MUSE "Dead Inside" and "Psycho" Singles

The Ear has been a huge fan of MUSE since hearing and seeing "Hysteria" on FUSE (remember when that music station didn't suck?). Yeah, I might have been a little late to the band, but "better late than never" as they say. Over the next few albums, MUSE found international success, in rather large part to a single being included on a Twilight movie soundtrack. Yeah, let's just forget about that and focus on the great music and thematic elements that made MUSE so great in the first place. Absolution, the album "Hysteria" was part of, was a powerful trip down the rock/concept album highway. An album full of songs about about the coming apocalypse (of various origins) that mankind is always rushing headlong towards while desperately attempting to avoid still ranks as the band's most complete, cohesive, and captivating album, thematically and musically. After hearing the first two singles from their new upcoming rock/concept album though, I'm thinking that the glory days of Absolution are once again returning to one of the most interesting rock bands of the last 20 years.  

20 Years of Superunknown

By March 8th 1994, grunge, as a mainstream sensation, had little over a year and a half of commercial success left in its grimy fuel tanks. Kurt was gone, the flannel was fading, and somewhere No Doubt were recording their breakthrough album Tragic Kingdom, the album that would usher in the ska-swing mainstream sensation. It was a sensation that would last a few years and then the record labels would move on to electronica (Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, and The Crystal Method) in search of the next “new rock revolution” that they could get on the ground floor of. When neither of these semi-organic genre explosions panned out, it was decided that the best way to capture the revenues from a new mainstream sensation was to just make one up for the masses, and the national music scene quickly devolved from thoughtful, introspective, and often activism fueled organic rock, to...Britney Spears.

Rockin' Christmas Playlist 2013

Yep, it's Yuletide once again, and Yuletide just isn't Yuletide without the proper Yule Tunes. This year I put together a bit of a different Christmas music playlist. Actually, I put together a few different ones, but my Rockin' Christmas 2013 Playlist has been the one that I've cued up more oft than my Olde World/Alt Christmas 2013 Playlist. I think that this was the case this year because Bad Religion (yes, THAT Bad Religion) released a Christmas album this year. To say the least, it fucking rocked (like all their albums do). Sorry about that F-bomb in a Christmas music blog post...must have been the punk in me sneering to the surface. Blame Bad Religion. Anyway, here we go with A Reasonable Good Ear's Rockin' Christmas 2013 Playlist.

Mark Lanegan & Duke Garwood “Black Pudding”

Coming pretty quickly on the heels of last year’s The Mark Lanegan Band’s Blues Funeral, Lanegan’s collaboration with English minimalist bluesman Duke Garwood, Black Pudding, completely deflates the wall of sound atmosphere that Blues Funeral wholeheartedly embraced. Blues Funeral, which featured Alain Johannes, Jack Irons, Josh Homme, as well as Duke Garwood (on a few tracks), thrived on leaving no sonic space unfilled. Black Pudding is comprised of almost nothing but space. That isn’t to say that the album is full of dead air. Rather, Garwood’s minimal playing, which still manages to say a great deal thematically, keeps the album’s sound simple. Lanegan’s Americana drenched voice scratches and scrapes nicely over top of Garwood’s threadbare arrangements creating an atmosphere reminiscent of a sultry, and slightly spooky, Faulknerian Deep South gothic. One can almost envision the floating dust motes highlighted by the yellow light seeping through the yellowed blinds of Miss Coldfield’s office as described in the opening paragraph of Absalom, Absalom! in tracks like “Death Rides a White Horse.” 

Alice In Chains "The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here" (Review)

Some said grunge died when Mudhoney released an album on Reprise Records. Some said grunge died with Kurt Cobain (or Layne Staley, or Andrew Wood). Still some others said grunge died when Chris Cornell cut his hair, and then Soundgarden broke up. It’s a good thing that grunge is already dead now that Jerry Cantrell has cut his hair, eh? Regardless of when “grunge died,” somebody forgot to tell the aforementioned Jerry Cantrell about the news. Reunited, reinvigorated, and most of all re-validated, Alice In Chains (with new member and co-singer William DuVall, and returning bassist MIke Inez and drummer Sean Kinney) are continuing the sludgy/grungy tradition of detuned guitar riffs, heavy bass and drums, and that overall melancholy saturated music that brought a smile to the face of many AIC fans, and is now doing so once again.  

Nine Inch Nails “Came Back Haunted”

During a relatively short sabbatical from his main musical project, upon which he scored two major films, won an Oscar, and released a full album and a half of material with his wife Mariqueen Maandig under the name How To Destroy Angels, Trent Reznor has resurrected Nine Inch Nails. A new single, a new full length album (due Sept. 3rd), and a planned North American Fall Tour all comprise the Industrial King of Darkness’ return. The first single off the new album, titled Hesitation Marks has debuted, and it’s everything long term NIN fans have come to expect and want from Reznor.