Category Archives: music review
Cheap Trick’s ‘We’re All Allright’ Proves They Are Exactly That
Although they may have money, fame, and hordes of adoring fans, it must be tough to be an iconic rock and roll band. Every time they release a new batch of material, they run the risk of sounding either too much like their previous selves, or not enough. Worse still is being confronted with the dreaded “return to form” cliché.
For a band like Cheap Trick, it’s even dicier. To which “form” should they return? The sardonic hard rock of their debut? The bubblegum power pop of “Dream Police”? The AOR of “The Flame”? After over four decades in the biz, they’ve covered a lot of ground, so deciding which direction to take presents an ongoing quandary that I don’t envy.
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Dion Lunadon’s Solo Album Will Blow Out Your Earholes
Photo by Ebru Yildiz
Best known as the bassist and guitarist of A Place To Bury Strangers for the last few years, Dion Lunadon was recently struck with a “neurotic impulse” to record a solo album. The result is a self-titled collection of 11 tracks.
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The Official Popshifter Podcast: Texas Gators, Violent Pornography, and Tales from the Pit
Biff Bam Pop! presents The Official Popshifter Podcast, featuring Popshifter Managing Editor Less Lee Moore and Featured Contributor Jeffery X Martin.
JP Fallavollita On…New Order Substance
Each week, one of Biff Bam Pop’s illustrious writers will delve into one of their favorite things. Perhaps it’s a movie or album they’ve carried with them for years. Maybe it’s something new that moved them and they think might move you too. Each week, a new subject, a new voice writing on… something they love.
Growing up, I’d spend much of my summer holidays and even my fall long weekends at my friend Melanie’s cottage on Chandos Lake, just outside the town of Apsley, well north of Toronto.
Melanie was more than just a neighbour. Born three days before me, she was like my (ever-so-slightly) older sister and we grew up together, involved in each other’s lives day in and day out.
We walked together, to and from school, through kindergarten and the elementary grades. Her parents were surrogates to my own. I’d have a bowl of Heinz Scarios for lunch at her house on some days and she’d have a mortadella panino at mine on others. On our street, we played “Hide and Seek” as a team, and she would give me nods and winks in games of Clue so that I could surmise Colonel Mustard, in the library, with the rope. We collected, and played with, G.I. Joe figures together: me with Duke and Snow Job, and her with Scarlet and Lady Jaye. She’d have my back in the odd fist fight in the school playground, and she’d help me pass anonymous Valentine’s Day notes to the girls of my affections in grades four and five. At her cottage we caught frogs together and went fishing off of the dock, then water-skiing, then roasting marshmallows on an open fire. Those days were full and fun days.
Although there was some inherent distance between each other after grade eight by attending different high schools, like all good older sisters, we’d still spend time together and she’d still share some of her discoveries with her “younger brother” when we did get together. One week at her cottage during the early summer of 1988, the summer before grade ten, she shared her newly discovered love for pop music by handing me, along with her Sony Walkman, a white cassette tape projecting the simple, powerful, black font words of: New Order Substance 1987. “Listen to this,” she commanded me. And, as an obedient by-three-days younger brother, I did.
That cassette tape would change my life.
45 Years of Black Sabbath
A classic album stands the test of time. It stirs an emotion the first time you hear it, and can evoke the same response years down the road. If it kicked your ass the first time, it will kick your ass again even if you haven’t heard it in years. Such is the case with Black Sabbath’s iconic self-titled debut, celebrating its 45th anniversary this month. Read the rest of this entry
Top 5 Albums Of 2014 As Chosen By JP Fallavollita
In a year that might well be remembered for one of the worlds largest bands giving their album away for free – much to the chagrin of many music listeners, there’s was plenty of great music to get excited about.
Albums from Ryan Adams, U2, Taylor Swift, Beck, Foo Fighters and many others made the rounds on airwaves, speakers and ear buds in 2014. Still, some albums, some songs were more resilient, more beautiful, catchier and more…”top” than the others,
That’s what this list is for.
A list showcasing the Top 5 albums I heard this year, like I write every year. Here were the albums I played relentlessly. Are any of your favourites on it?
Lordi – Scare Force One
Finnish monster band Lordi saw the recent release of their latest album, Scare Force One. This is the second disc from the current lineup of Mr. Lordi, Amen, OX, Mana, and Hella. Check out the review after the jump.
31 Days of Horror: Dio Live In London Hammersmith Apollo 1993
If you want to talk about scares during the month of October, when it comes to music, it’s hard not to think of the legendary Ronnie James Dio. From his days in Elf and Rainbow, through to his seminal albums with Black Sabbath and then in his own self-titled band, Dio always portrayed himself as a badass, the Wizard of Rock and Roll, holding the Devil Horns in the air while wailing that unmistakeable banshee wail. Dio may have been diminutive in stature, but when it came to heavy metal, the man ruled over all.
A Rock ‘N’ Roll Crucible: U2–Songs Of Innocence (2014) Reviewed
Not counting last year’s “Ordinary Love” from the Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom film and this year’s “Invisible” for Product Red, it’s been five years since we last heard from U2.
No Line On the Horizon, the band’s twelfth studio album, released in early 2009, was a relative failure in terms of sales, even if the resulting world tour was the highest grossing concert tour in history. It was evident: people still wanted to hear and see U2. For that reason and that reason alone, the aged Irish rockers can still be deemed as being relevant musically, politically, and culturally. With the surprise album release of Songs of Innocence last week, five long years since their last proper album, U2, the long-lasting survivors of rock and roll, test the theory of relevancy once more.
And they come through that crucible in one of the most unexpected ways imaginable: if not through the music itself, then through the musical process.
Yes Move Heaven and Earth And Create A Beautiful Album
A new album from a classic group can often be problematic – nobody sells albums anymore, especially bands of an older ilk who are faced with an aging fan base that solely wants to hear the hits of yesteryear delivered live. Try as I might to convince someone that the Rolling Stones A Bigger Bang was a solid addition to their catalogue, or that The Who’s Endless Wire was a consistently strong piece of art, there’s a good shot it will fall on deaf ears. The same can be said for prog rock masters Yes, who, in 2011, put out Fly From Here, an album I consider to be their best since 1980’s Drama. Some of their unrelentingly vocal fan base may agree with, while others would take the absence of founding member and lead singer Jon Anderson as reason enough to dismiss that effort.
If that’s the case, there’s no way I’ll be able to convince you that the band’s latest album, Heaven and Earth, is even better than Fly From Here. Or that, in my humble opinion, Yes has delivered a modern masterpiece.
