Katy Perry
Teenage Dream
Capitol Records
3/10
While I do not listen to it on the regular, I understand the place pop music has in society. People don’t want sad music that reminds them that they are single, unemployed, or ghastly over/underweight. Here comes Katy Perry, taking her place alongside the power-players of female pop-stars, providing jams that speak to the booty, not the heart. Teenage Dream is complete with vocal effects, drum loops and excessive production techniques. Oh, and was that a fucking sax solo I heard?
While I will say Perry’s follow-up to …

Fake Problems
Real Ghosts Caught On Tape
SideOneDummy Records
9/10
Fake Problems upcoming 3rd album, Real Ghosts Caught on Tape is perhaps their best release to date. Ghosts is able to take the best attributes from each of their previous releases and put them together in such a way that this album has already made my top 10 list for year despite there being a solid 3 months left of releases to look forward to. It has the musical simplicity of Spurs and Spokes/ Bull >Matador, the energy of It’s Great to Be Alive …

The Menzingers
Chamberlain Waits
Red Scare Records
8/10
Having previously enjoyed A Lesson in the abuse of Information Technology, I switched on The Menzingers’ new record with that mixed sense of excitement and trepidation you get when you like a band and don’t want to be let down by a dubious second album. With Chamberlain Waits you certainly aren’t disappointed. The raw and passionate sounds that are so evident in the first album are honed to brilliance, giving us track after track that is not only easy on the ears, but that makes your stomach …

Weezer
Hurley
Epitaph Records
9/10

The first track off this record is without a doubt one of the strongest starting tracks of a record I have heard. “Memories” leads Hurley into a succession of solid songs. It has that classic Weezer sound that we know and love, yet this one goes beyond that. There is another layer that is more melodic and before I knew it I was singing along, even before I was one hundred percent sure of the words.

I’m not gonna say this record is perfect, cuz it’s not. It has …

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 …

The Constellations
Southern Gothic – CD Review
Virgin Records
6/10
When I first picked up the record and read–The Constellations, I knew it would be my next Racket victim. The band’s name sounds like a Motown group, but the eight-piece group from Atlanta does not use enough tambourines for that. There are definitely plenty of handclaps though! Scanning my eyes downward, I read the title of their debut album, Southern Gothic, and my mind instantly went to Faulker. However, what ensued was not grotesque southern literature but rather, a clusterfuck of awkward sounding party …

Coheed and Cambria
With the Dear Hunter and Porcupine Tree
The Wiltern
August 12, 2010
As I have lamented in the past, it’s often disappointing to me how bad the sound quality is for the opening band on a major bill show. Though I am not too familiar with their music, what I’ve heard I like, and I was excited to go out and see the Dear Hunter, and I wanted to actually HEAR the Dear Hunter at their show. Such was not the case.
The band is amazingly talented, and their songs are beautiful …

Porcupine Tree
Anesthetize
Kscope/Roadrunner Records
8/10
Even though you may have never heard them on terrestrial radio, Porcupine Tree has become one of progressive rock’s solid touring bands with shows dating back to 1993. Their latest live DVD, Anesthetize, was released earlier this year in May and features the five-piece band rocking out in Tilburg (for the geographically challenged, that’s in the Netherlands) from a tour in 2008. The captivating live show features their 2007 album Fear of a Blank Planet in its entirety and that’s just the first half…
The band’s performance is musically …

Stephen Egerton
The Seven Degrees Of
Paper + Plastic
5/10
I’ve listened to this album over and over to try to figure out what to say about it and I keep coming to the same conclusion. It’s not good. It’s not at all bad either, which is why it gets a five, but it’s boring. I’m not impressed. It’s one of those albums where a musician shows how important they are by having friends from all these other bands perform with them on an album. You know, sort of like Dave Grohl’s Probot, except …

NOFX/ Teenage Bottle Rocket
Madison Theater
Covington, KY
Bands I like, I see live as often as I can. These two bands are lumped in that category. I’ve seen NOFX a plethora of times over the years, and as I’ve grown to like TBR more and more, they are quickly catching up.  I have to admit, my friends and I were really here to see Teenage Bottlerocket. We all referred to it as “the TBR show.” What can I say? We love that short, three-chord shit.
We got to the venue a bit late, …

This marks the 24th time I had seen Streetlight Manifesto. To be honest I was a little apathetic going into the show considering the last few times I had seen the band they were somewhat lackluster. However, this night would prove to be perhaps the best performance I had ever seen the band put on in the past 5 years.
After waiting for my photographer/best friend, we entered the House of Blues only to find out we missed Dan Potthast, which was a bummer. After realizing this sadness, we headed down …

Cancer Bats
Bears, Mayors, Scraps and Bones
Good Fight/Distort
7/10
This album is just balls to the fucking wall. It’s brutal, edgy, powerful and just… good. I find it ironic that the lead off track is titled “Sleep This Away,” because after listening to the loud, extreme song, there will be no sleep. Loud and hard is the motto for this album, and frankly, I do not mind one bit.
Though this is definitely their hardest album to date, CB has also gone with a “If it’s not broke, then why fix it?” mentality, and …

Stewart
Kicks
Self-Released
7/10
Goddammit. I am slightly ashamed that I find Stewart’s Kicks so damned catchy. Simple riffs, simpler drum beats, fairly low-end production values and  the misnomer of a man-name with a lady singer– any of these have the possibility to irritate me to no end, yet I find myself listening to it long after was necessary to write this review. Simple? Yeah. Catchy?  Hell yeah.
Clocking in at just under 27 minutes across 9 tracks, they have obviously discovered the DNA of writing pop songs designed to catch the attention of the …

Captain, We’re Sinking
It’s A Trap
Kind of Like Records
9/10
Holy shit. Friends of The Menzingers, Captain, We’re Sinking make sure that their amigos don’t lose cred by hanging with squares. In this 4 track  EP, CWS shreds through it, obliterating my ears for 12 minutes. Well, the EP is 12 minutes, but I had it on for THREE HOURS without getting bored with the same four jams.
Playing at The Fest 8 is no surprise, but the fact that they aren’t bigger than they are is. Punk pop in the highest form, CWS …

Animal Names
Let It Been
Boat Dreams From the Hill
5/10
First things first, the title is decent. I kinda hate the Beatles so poking fun, whether a sign of praise or not, is a good start.  Secondly, I like to think their name is a jab at nearly every indie band in existence (you know, ‘cuz they all have animal names).  Musically, this falls somewhere between power pop and indie rock and features dual male and female vocals. It’s not all that bad, but nothing spectacular.
While listening, the Promise Ring popped into my …

The Like
Release Me
Downtown Records
8/10
At first, I was astonished by the amount of growth in The Like since their 2005 debut LP Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking. But upon remembering how young the ladies of The Like still are, I would be more surprised if they were still churning out the LA indie-pop that was all the rage in ’05 – Rilo Kiley, Phantom Planet, Rooney, etc… Now it seems that original members Elizabeth “Z” Berg (vox/guitar) and drummer Tennessee Thomas  are listening to less modern day LA jams and …