Jim Bianco
LOUDMOUTH
10/10
Bars across America need a new anthem, and Jim Bianco’s first track off of LOUDMOUTH is the solution.  With lyrics about the fun life you led and no matter the outcome, classic rock style drums, and just enough mandolin to bring out the Irish drunk in everyone, “Sinners” is sure to have everyone, sinner or not, singing.  Jim Bianco is full of wit, heartbreak, lust, comedy, and fun, but all with a great amount of honesty.  “But I Still Want You” tells the truth of something we’ve all been …

Corinne Bailey Rae
The Love EP
Capitol Records
6.5/10
While I’m not usually a fan of cover songs (let alone cover albums…painful), Corinne Bailey Rae’s The Love EP isn’t too bad.  The singer-songwriter takes a stab at putting her own twist on some famous love songs from the past.
The EP opened rather weak with “I Wanna Be Your Lover” originally recorded by Prince.  A synth took over a lot of the instruments of the original, which made the song more cheesy and not really much of a cover at all, as it sounded very …

Charles Manson
Air
Magic Bullet Records
4.5/10
Air is the first of a four part series (ATWA – Air, Trees, Water, Animals) that is currently being released by Charles Manson on Magic Bullet Recordings.  Talk about lo-fi recordings; this is the lowest of lo-fi. It sounds like he was given a $10 tape recorder, took it to his prison cell, and went at it with his guitar (and although I couldn’t find a definite answer, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was how it was recorded).
Musically, the sitting-on-a-porch blues of an acoustic guitar and …

The Heat Tape
Raccoon Valley Recordings
10/10
Raccoon Valley Recordings is the debut album from The Heat Tape, and man do they get the adrenaline going!  When I took a first run through of the album I thought, “What kind of cheap wannabe punk shit is this!?” In all reality, just the way it was recorded was unexpected.  With how easy home recording can be and the advances in it as well, I expect a half way decent sound out of anything I listen to. But after a second listen I fell in …

Crawl Babies
Crawl Babies EP
5/10
I’m pretty much 50/50 with my liking of Crawl Babies.  They’re good but their style of music is just over done and been around for a long time now (slow indie rock with overuse of concert hall reverb).  One small thing I did like were the guitar licks that had a surf rock influence sound to them, as heard in the EP’s opener “Ginger’s Gone.” Unfortunately, other than that, there isn’t much to this band.  Again, they’re good and I like it, but there isn’t anything that …

Secondhand Serenade
Here Me Now
2/10
When I hit play on the album’s opener “Distance” and listened to the first 5 seconds, I must admit I had an excited moment because it reminded me of how a Dashboard Confessional album would start; guitar strumming with light piano. But then John Vesely starts singing his awful lyrics about driving down a dark highway alone. Umm…haven’t we heard this line about 157 times in the past year? He even sings about “driving alone” in “Only Hope” again. Yeah, we get it. Musically, it’s like they’re …