-
Buffalo Springfield ‘Buffalo Springfield’ (1966)
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1970 album Deja Vu is one of my favorite albums of all-time, and its genesis can be found with Buffalo Springfield and their 1966 debut self-titled album. The band featured Neil Young and Stephen Stills who would go on to have legendary careers both as part of supergroups and solo…
-
Primus ‘Sailing The Seas Of Cheese’ (1990)
In the ether of avant-garde funk metal there exists one band whose gravitational pull is undeniable. That band is Primus. The plucky guitar of Larry LaLonde, obscure time signatures of Tim Alexander, and virtuosic bass playing of the one and only Les Claypool have combined to create a uniquely “Did someone put a psychedelic in…
-
We Were Sharks ‘Lost Touch’ (2018)
Crunchy guitar riffs, fat drums, and catchy vocal hooks. We Were Sharks Lost Touch slams just about every pop punk trope into the album’s 28 minute runtime with a slight dose of Canadian flair that helps keep things interesting. The band certainly cuts a path down well-traveled roads but there’s a time and place for…
-
The Whispers ‘Love For Love’ (1982)
One of my favorite guilty pleasures is over-produced and opulent R&B from the 80’s that blends smooth jazz with the upbeat funk that took great inspiration from albums like Parliament’s 1975 magnum opus Mothership Connection and went on to inspire one of the greatest contemporary pop funk albums in Bruno Mars’ 24K Magic. The Whispers…
-
Joni Mitchell ‘Blue’ (1971)
Evaluating the importance of Joni Mitchell’s Blue over fifty years since it was released is a unique experience. From a contemporary listening perspective it’s a lovely folk album, filled with wonderful harmonies and rock-solid storytelling that explores the dynamics of romantic relationships and the swirling emotions that come along with them. But from a historical…
-
Slaid Cleaves ‘Broke Down’ (2000)
I was first introduced to Slaid Cleaves by one of my closest friends during freshman year of high school. His father was a huge folk music fan and always had a ton of new and interesting records from lesser known artists lying around the house and would always share them with a smile on his…
-
Chicago ‘Chicago Transit Authority’ (1969)
Self-described as “a rock band with horns”, the venerable Chicago is one of the best-selling rock and roll bands of all-time with over 40 million records sold. Their unique approach to consistent corporate branding, their remarkably consistent studio album output (one album released per year from 1969 to 1980), and focus on delivering a simply…
-
Joey Valence & Brae ‘NO HANDS’ (2024)
NO HANDS sounds like a time machine transported the Beastie Boys to 2024 and let the boys rip with modern trance rock sounds. Joey Valence & Brae self-admittedly take a ton of inspiration from the boys from the 5 boroughs, but in the end it doesn’t really matter cause this shit is simply just fun…
-
Oingo Boingo ‘Dead Man’s Party’ (1985)
Oingo Boingo’s 1985 album Dead Man’s Party is a unique experience from start to finish, capturing the eccentric nature of the band and all of their quirky provocativeness. I’ve been running a ton during 2024 (my New Year resolution is to hit a Vo2 Max over 50) and this album is a slam dunk pick…
-
Weather Report ‘Heavy Weather’ (1977)
Jazz-rock is this interesting little corner of the music world that existed in the early 70’s amidst the prog-rock explosion before sort of withering away into smooth jazz with the likes of Kenny G in the 80’s. Jazz rock took a whole bunch of brilliant musicians who grew up listening to rock n’ roll and…
-
Bob Dylan ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’ (1963)
It’s taken me forever to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard in this case) on Bob Dylan for a variety of reasons— this is America’s historical orator, one of the greatest musical poets of all-time, a man of substance and supreme conviction. One of the reasons my wife and I named our son…
-
The Strokes ‘Is This It’ (2001)
There are great musical achievements that stand the test of time. There are bands who are just fucking cool. And there are bands who catch fire out of nowhere before capturing the attention of the entire world. It’s not often those traits intersect so perfectly that the Venn Diagram ends up looking like a circle.…
-
Blink-182 ‘Dude Ranch’ (1996)
For myself and countless other millennials who got into punk rock during our early tweens, Dude Ranch is the album that started it all. Blink’s 1999 album Enema of the State was the one which shot them into global superstardom, but real ones know that things started to get real when Mark Hoppus, Tom Delonge,…
-
Steve Winwood ‘Arc of a Diver’ (1980)
As a member of some of my favorite classic rock bands from the late 60’s (Blind Faith and Traffic), I’ve always been a massive stan for Steve Winwood. His gloriously high and rich tenor voice, his ability to play multiple instruments, and his emphasis on writing songs that prioritize the groove above all else have…
-
The Youngbloods ‘The Youngbloods’ (1967)
Sometimes I like to dig through old 60’s folk rock bands who never really made it and check out their albums for no other reason than I enjoy the blind discovery inherent in the process but also the familiarity of what you’re going to get. So many bands in that era and genre of music…
-
Marty Robbins ‘Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs’ (1959)
There’s been a recent resurgence of old Country Western melodies as of late in Indie Rock bands. It’s hard to tell why this is happening– perhaps it’s a desire for something innately human in the early age of Artificial Intelligence, or a reaction to the COVID pandemic that led us to put a greater importance…
-
JID ‘The Forever Story’ (2022)
Penned as a spiritual follow up to his 2017 debut studio album The Never Story, JID’s 2022 cut The Forever Story is an ambitious project that chronicles the life experiences over the past 20 years that brought him to where he is today. In the vein of hip hop giants Kendrick Lamar and J Cole,…
-
System of a Down ‘Toxicity’ (2001)
Today when a band gets labelled with the term nu-metal it’s almost a credibility death sentence. Back in 2001? Not so much. This was the era when Korn and Limp Bizkit were a mainstream thing, constantly played on MTV, and every young male in their teens was obsessed. Amidst this backdrop System of a Down…
-
Dennis Wilson ‘Pacific Ocean Blue’ (1977)
Out of all the albums I’ve listened to over the last year in a half (529 plus in a row, and counting) the one that has come out of the woodwork and struck me completely by surprise is this one. I’m not a huge Beach Boys fan by any stretch of the imagination, and outside…
-
Brooks & Dunn ‘Reboot’ (2019)
The concept of Reboot is beautiful in its simplicity– take one of the most successful country music recording acts in music history (39 Top 10 songs since 1991, 20 of them hitting #1), rearrange 12 of their most classic songs two decades after they were released, and pair them up with the most popular contemporary…
-
No Doubt ‘Tragic Kingdom’ (1995)
The backdrop of No Doubt’s third album Tragic Kingdom reads somewhat like a soap opera– keyboardist and principal songwriter Eric Stefani left the band in the middle of the sessions after struggling with the fact he was being asked to include other band members in the songwriting process, and shortly after that bassist Tony Kanal…
-
The Velvet Underground ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico’ (1967)
Sexual deviancy and drug abuse have been the hallmarks of rock and roll since its inception, and The Velvet Underground were one of the first bands to really lean into those motifs as a core tenet of what they stood for. Upon its release The Velvet Underground & Nico was controversial and critically panned, both…
-
New Order ‘Power Corruption and Lies’ (1983)
New Order was formed by the former band members of Joy Division following the abrupt suicide of their lead singer Ian Curtis. With their new project they retained many of the things that made Joy Division a post-punk cult favorite (namely the repetitive drones and seemingly detached vocal style) while introducing more synth-pop and dance-rock…
-
Casey ‘How To Disappear’ (2024)
Casey’s 2024 album How To Disappear marked a return for the Welsh based five piece after a five year hiatus where there future was uncertain. The band broke up in 2019 after lead singer Tom Weaver suffered severe health complications, reuniting a few years later once they realized they collectively had more to say. The…
-
Grizzly Bear ‘Shields’ (2012)
I remember being in an absolute haze watching Grizzly Bear at Outside Lands in 2013, the year after they went on tour supporting Shields, and being absolutely blown away by their live performance. This was a band who had found a way to tap into the more obscure side of Indie Rock, infused with peculiar…
-
Van Halen ‘Van Halen’ (1978)
Imagine you’re 16 years old, sitting in your bedroom at home, and your older brother bursts into your room with a new album from an unknown band named Van Halen that just released their debut album. You’re getting into rock and roll so you flip it on and you hear the guitar playing of Eddie…
-
Rufio ‘Perhaps, I Suppose…’ (2001)
Perhaps, I Suppose… is what I remember my early teens sounding like– obsessed with girls with absolutely zero experience in how to communicate with them, imbuing way too much meaning into mundane fleeting glances, and desperately trying to figure out what all these big feelings going on in my head were all about (hint: it…
-
Blind Melon ‘Blind Melon’ (1992)
“No Rain” is synonymous with 90’s alternative rock in a way few songs are. The playful and bubbly guitar riff that kicks things off, the lackadaisical rhythm section sort of the sardonic lyrical choices that sound as if they’re being sung on a sunny day in a field of green grass while frontman Shannon Hoon…
-
DEVO ‘Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!’ (1978)
Despite being labelled a joke band whose deadpan humor and absurd live show featuring over the top science fiction references made them a fixture in the early American New Wave scene, Devo’s genesis was born of more serious circumstances. Their band name came from the concept of “de-evolution” (an idea that mankind had begun to…
-
The Jesus and Mary Chain ‘Psychocandy’ (1985)
When brothers Jim and William Reid formed The Jesus and Mary Chain they clearly had one idea in mind– take traditional pop song arrangements and absolutely drench them in feedback, distortion, and reverb to render them almost entirely unnoticeable. With their debut album Psychocandy you could consider it mission accomplished. The entire album sounds as…
-
Dorothy ‘ROCKISDEAD’ (2016)
I’ve always had a soft spot for high-octane rock and roll female lead singers that totally kick ass. Dorothy’s ROCKISDEAD checks that box. Lead singer Dorothy Martin raises hell for 35 straight minutes on the band’s debut album, and while the whole affair is a pretty meat and potatoes version of dirty southern rock that…
-
The Nice ‘The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack’ (1968)
In the summer of 1968 prog-rock’s foundation was still being laid. Using elements of psychedelic pop that came to prominence off the heels of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and combining it with Cream’s affinity for blues-rock jamming found on Disraeli Gears, The Nice wedged themselves between the two and in the…
-
The Temper Trap ‘Conditions’ (2009)
I spent the better part of last weekend listening to The Temper Trap’s 2009 album Conditions and asking myself if this album was a low-key late aughts masterpiece that time somewhat forgot. The Australian-based quartet has all of the delayed glittery guitar grandiose of Edge from U2, the driving rhythm section of Coldplay that sounds…
-
Red Hot Chili Peppers ‘Californication’ (1999)
Is there a song that’s skippable on Californication? That’s the question I posed to a friend of mine in the midst of injecting the Red Hot Chili Peppers magnum opus into my veins over this past Memorial Day weekend. Out of all the top-end albums in the Peppers discography, from Stadium Arcadium to Unlimited Love…
-
HAIM ‘Days Are Gone’ (2013)
HAIM’s brand of pop rock that harkens back to the days of Fleetwood Mac and the Doobie Brothers was somewhat of a revelation in 2013. The trio of sisters, who grew up together in a music-loving family and formed a family band that played at local county fairs alongside their parents, made R&B infused soft…
-
The Residents ‘Duck Stab’ (1978)
Art-rock band The Residents never shied away from the bizarre and 1978’s Duck Stab is no exception. This album is unsettling, unexpected, and unique in a way that is either going to feel like a transformative piece of experimental rock or nothing more than pure drivel. I tend towards the latter and frankly struggled to…
MUSIC OF MATTHEW.
Planet Earth’s #1 Source for Album Reviews.
Search through over 1,000 album reviews below
About the Author
Jason Matthew Plank listens to copious amounts of music and writes about one album each day. He is currently active in the bands Related to Strangers (post-hardcore) and Kindergarten Cartel (punk covers of children’s nursery rhymes).
RECENT REVIEWS
