Mar 05, 2014 Music Issue #49 - February/March 2014 - Portlandia

The sophomore full-length from The Casket Girls is the rare kind of second album that manages to maintain the charm and mystery of the debut while expanding and refining its sonic formula. More

Mar 04, 2014 Music Issue #49 - February/March 2014 - Portlandia

Dead of winter, 2012: Toronto-based Robert Alfons and Maya Postepski (also of Canada's Austra), who called themselves Trust, deliver what would become one of the year's best and most self-assured debut albums. More

Mar 03, 2014 Music Issue #49 - February/March 2014 - Portlandia

For all their mutations, The Men generally don't do anything they'd be ashamed to have splayed across the front page of the Village Voice. They make rock music, flexibly and without posturing. More

Mar 03, 2014 Music Issue #49 - February/March 2014 - Portlandia

Yardboat, the 2012 debut from this Athens four-piece, was mostly, with exception of one 10-minute atmospheric instrumental, a psych-tinged Americana album with interesting lead guitar work and an understated melodicism.  More

Feb 28, 2014 Music Issue #49 - February/March 2014 - Portlandia

If only the easy listening genre wasn't already dedicated to orchestras and big bands and voices made famous decades ago. If only it was accepting new albums into its category. Because Atlaswould absolutely define it. More

Feb 28, 2014 Music Issue #49 - February/March 2014 - Portlandia

Bombay Bicycle Club have called their new album So Long, See You Tomorrow, but it could just as easily have been named Bombay Bicycle Club: Fun With Synthesizers. Never a band to shy away from experimentation, for their fourth full-length release the North London band have injected their glittering guitar pop with textural synths and dance sounds. More

Feb 27, 2014 Music Issue #49 - February/March 2014 - Portlandia

British art rockers Wild Beasts may hail from the wilds of Cumbria in the far north of England, but their music has always defied their craggy-landscaped origin and ferocious name: their 2009 breakthrough albumTwo Dancers and it's 2011 follow-up Smother were sinuously sophisticated and low-key—barbed tales of sexual longing and self-loathing wrapped in sleek, atmospheric indie rock. More

Feb 26, 2014 Music Issue #49 - February/March 2014 - Portlandia

The career trajectory of German polymaths The Notwist has always been one of steady evolution and mutation. We've long waved auf wiedersehen to the early '90s punk stylings of The Notwist and Nook, and now it seems the sentimental bedroom electronica of Shrink and Neon Golden is headed the same way. More

Feb 25, 2014 Music Issue #49 - February/March 2014 - Portlandia

Attempt to connect the dots between Beck releases and you'll rarely find moments where the artist has circled back on himself. Unfettered by genre or by audience expectations, his drowsy baritone and free-associative lyrics are the only things which remain consistent from album to album. More