Album Review: Sarah Blasko – Depth of Field

On the one hand, Blasko’s voice is in fine form on Depth of Field, conveying strength and fragility, and textured with a husky breathiness or a sharp clarity – often managing to maintain these conflicting qualities simultaneously –and the album’s darker, minimalist arrangements prove rather compelling. Lead

Album Review: Cindy Wilson – Change

As an album, Change is admirably consistent in quality and tightly focused in character, but this results in a record that largely drifts into the background, existing as quirky easy-listening. Only two tracks stand out for more than an instant, the titular Change and Brother. Change because it behaves as an

Album Review: Free Pizza – Berlin, DE

Given that founding members Vio and Cardenas are South-American born and Miami raised, and that Free Pizza was formed in Boston, it probably isn’t surprising that place – both in the sense of geographic location, and one’s circumstances – is integral in informing the group’s music.  Berlin, DE was written

Album Review: Andrew Bird – Are You Serious

The music of multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter Andrew Bird is chimeric, and it constantly writhes and shifts just as you think you have a firm grasp of it.  This is hardly surprising given his experimental tendencies, his proficiency with varied instruments and musical styles, and it certainly makes for exciting

Album Review: Beau – That Thing Reality

Album opener, C’mon Please, is a rocking pop song which doesn’t even relent for its melody drenched bridge.  Beau promptly mix it up with the narratively driven, minimally arranged, folk-pop of Jane Hotel, and the funky rhythms, vocal harmonies and odd vocal syncopations of Mosquito, which is strangely satisfying as