Record Review: Peter Bjorn and John - Gimme Some

For Atlanta Music Guide:

Peter Bjorn and John
Gimme Some
Almost Gold

Gimme Some is perhaps one of the sunniest records of the year, but Swedish trio Peter Bjorn and John took a strange, twisty road to get here. This, the band’s sixth LP, is a far cry from the weird hollowness and intimately narrative lyrics found on their 2006 U.S. breakthrough Writer’s Block. That set of songs still resonates in XM Radio annals and every comfy coffee shop – especially the whistling, ubiquitous single “Young Folks” featuring The Concretes’ Victoria Bergsman. The band’s intervening two albums (2008’s Seaside Rock and 2009’s Living Thing) reveal something of its stylistic journey over the past five years as Peter Morén, BjörnYttling and John Eriksson traversed various inroads of pop experimentalism. With Gimme Some, however, it’s obvious they’ve emerged in the bright light after their creative tunnel...[Read more]

Record Review: Akron/Family - S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT

For Flagpole:

Akron/Family
S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT
Dead Oceans

At what point does lack of identity become an identity in and of itself? Akron/Family, the now-trio sometimes called the only hipster-friendly jam band, has undergone multiple personality changes, each record revealing a new layer in their fragrant musical onion...[Read more]



Previously, on FOA: Akron/Family @ The Earl, 8/13/09

Flagpole Feature: Pride Parade

For Flagpole:

Pride Parade
Growing Without Growing Up

Even big kids need room to grow. After five years as a band—scrapping predecessor Brown Frown, releasing an EP and two LPs with Kyle Spence of Harvey Milk and playing to Athens audiences large and small—Pride Parade needed to stretch out.

To record the band’s third full-length with the hope of reproducing the effect of its widely adored live show, the quintet retreated to Watkinsville’s Full Moon Studio and, with the help of Jay Rodgers, simultaneously tracked all instruments in the expansive room there. “We wanted [the recording] to be something we didn't have to go in and piecemeal,” says guitarist Allen Owens. “We just rehearsed our asses off and made sure we went in there and played the stuff like we play it live.”...[Read more]

Record Review: Lia Ices - Grown Unknown

For Stomp and Stammer a couple months back:

Lia Ices
Grown Unknown
Jagjaguwar

I never thought I'd actively think about Paula Cole again. When she stopped wondering where all the cowboys had gone – when I grew out of my teenage obsession with a certain Mr. Dawson Leery – I thought Paula and I were through. And though, admittedly, I'm not one to seek out the female singer-songwriter over other musician types, I heard my fill of others like her in the intervening dozen or so years, and barring Natalie Merchant, no one drove me to recall her.

But whenever the double-tracked vocals on sections of Lia Ices' Grown Unknown kick in, I'm back in my bedroom, wishing a Dawson would climb a ladder into my window...[Read more]