I once saw The Naked & Famous play to a late afternoon festival crowd in 2013 that was made up almost entirely of 19-year-olds. I also reviewed their new album, Simple Forms, for Rolling Stone, here.
Category Archives: Music
Ben Lee – Freedom, Love and the Recuperation of the Human Mind review (for Rolling Stone)
The evolution of Ben Lee is pretty interesting — from weirdo indie pop to conceptual spiritual noise to agreeable adult contemporary folk-pop — and his latest album takes a very high-minded bent. Just in case you didn’t pick that up from the title. Freedom, Love and the Recuperation of the Human Mind is out now and I reviewed it for Rolling Stone here.
Feature: 11 Bands You Should Get Back Together With (for FasterLouder)
In which I make jokes about: Daniel Chick, Charlie Pickering, Nova Scotian fishing fleets, Pauline Hanson, Adam Sandler, the Pigeon Detectives and many, many other things.
Also, it’s about bands you should make sure you still like. Because they’re good. Have a read here.
Slaves – ‘Take Control’ review (Rolling Stone)
Getting a Beastie Boy to produce your record: smart.
Slaves’ swaggery-eff you punk, and their first album Are You Satisfied (that I also reviewed for Rolling Stone) was a blast of pungent fresh air, so getting Mike D to produce their second record is an unexpected, yet awesome, move. With that in mind, read my review of Slaves’ Take Control for Rolling Stone right here.
Sticky Fingers – ‘Westway: The Glitter & The Slums’ feature review (for Rolling Stone)
Sticky Fingers offstage rock’n’roll personas – whether you believe in the veracity of them or not – can, in an unsurprising way, take away from their musical output.
Which kinda sucks. Because their new album, Westway: The Glitter & The Slums works as a super-interesting comedown record to their last album, Land of Pleasure. That was a bonkers sunshine indie psyche-pop gem — my 2014 review of it for Rolling Stone gave it 4 stars — and Westway is scrappier, stranger and not quite the summer-jam kiler its predecessor was. It definitely has more heart, however.
Anyway. With that in mind – my featured review of Westway: The Glitter & The Slums for Rolling Stone is right here.
jaymz clements 