Wounded Messenger’s Top 101 Albums of the Decade

I now understand the infatuation that music journalists have with making lists. As pretentious, biased, and personalized as lists are, they’re just as much fun to do. Especially this one, which I won’t purport to be the “best” albums of the decade, only my “favorite” albums of the decade. As for the number, well, I [...]

Album Review: Fu Manchu – Signs of Infinite Power

It’s always a shame when once-great bands outlive their usefulness. Though some artists have forged lucrative careers by hammering away for years, even decades beyond their prime, there are some whose back catalog simply won’t allow for such half-assing. Fu Manchu is one of those bands, and Signs of Infinite Power is the final salvo [...]

Album Review: Mike Posner and The Brain Trust – A Matter of Time

Michigan’s Mike Posner highlights his raspy, tuneful voice and infectious songs on this “mixtape,” which plays like a fully fleshed album. Whatever you call it, A Matter of Time sounds like great practice for the recording and release of his upcoming first album, which will arrive in 2010. Posner could do a lot worse than [...]

Album Review: Assembly of Dust – Some Assembly Required

The many parts and pieces that comprise Some Assembly Required snap together in a truly satisfying way, save a few bum edges. Featuring special guests on each song, the album wins in the personnel department, but it’s hard to tell if the guests – John Scofield, Tony Rice, Grace Potter, Mike Gordon, Bela Fleck, Jerry [...]

Album Review: Massive Attack – Splitting the Atom EP

Massive Attack’s new full-length release is coming in a few months, and this EP is the ultimate teaser. Each of the four tracks on Splitting the Atom features unique vocal contributions from the likes of Tunde Adebimpe (TV on the Radio), longtime contributor Horace Andy, Martina Topley Bird (Tricky), and Guy Garvey (Elbow). Two of [...]

Album Review: Yonder Mountain String Band – The Show

“Out of the Blue,” the strongest song on YMSB’s The Show, leads off the album, and false hopes abound in the song’s galloping rhythm and focused songwriting. The Show quickly becomes a real head-scratcher for YMSB fans with song number two – “Complicated” – which shares more than just a name with the horrible Avril [...]

Album Review: Volcano Choir – Unmap

Unmap is the rare record that excites by premise alone: pair indie-folk king Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) with the equally esoteric Wisconsin post-rock band Collections of Colonies of Bees, and let Vernon’s arresting voice glide over the band’s mesmerizing, cinematic sound collages. That tantalizing prospect doesn’t even begin to describe the music found on Unmap, [...]

Album Review: Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe – Brother’s Keeper

Karl Denson spent more than a decade at the top of the jazz-funk-jam heap, and his band Tiny Universe became legendary for non-stop funk frenzies that tested the limits of time and space. On Brother’s Keeper, it’s clear that he’s trying for more sophistication, continuing to focus on his own vocal stylings while offering new [...]

Album Review: SeepeopleS – Apocalypse Cow Vol. 2

During “What’s Missing,” the lush, schizophrenic track that opens Apocalypse Cow Vol. 2, SeepeopleS front man Will Bradford creepily announces, “what’s missing is old fashioned justice.” He’s on about something sinister and corrupt, but he could easily be talking about the puzzling path his band has traveled for the last 7 years. For the third [...]

Album Review: Phish – Joy

As maligned as it is, Phish’s studio catalog does one thing really well: it provides brief but telling capsules that mark pivotal moments in the evolution of the band’s music, lives and career. Joy is unlike any other album they’ve released in terms of subject matter, since many of the songs were born of the [...]