Albums

“The trio give birth to an amalgamation of vintage keyboards”

Dear Music Critic,

I have a problem with your review.  You see the thing is… I don’t actually know what you’re talking about. To me, the above quote makes me conjure up a mental image of three people give birth to old rusty keyboards. Ouch. I can see you’ve given the album four stars… but the seven paragraphs between the photo of the album cover and the four stars reads to me like a mountain of musical gibberish.

Continue reading "I’ve seen the future of rock, but I just don’t understand it" »

Let’s call this a pre-emptive strike, or in the least a kind of Kanye West moment: “Yo Penbo, I’m gonna let you finish but your list is unsatisfactory”. Having not contributed to The Punch’s best albums of the decade I’m going to beat you dear readers to the first critique of the list.

Needless to say the 30 album list chosen by Punch editor David Penberthy, resident critic Dennis Atkins and contributor Alison Piotrowski is full of great and deserved music.

Atkins’ list is limited only to the best albums of 2009.

Thankfully there’s not a lot of cross-over, although both The Strokes and M.I.A get on two lists so maybe they have to be considered artists of the decade.

But as always is the case with these lists it’s the omissions that we seem to look out for more than the choices themselves.

Hip hop’s pretty underrepresented in Penbo and Alison’s decade lists, (no Eminem or Kanye) and whether you like them or not Radiohead probably deserved to make it somewhere - if only for the devout following they’ve inspired amongst so many.

The best indy rock album of the decade (in my opinion) was left off the list entirely: The New Pornographers Electric Version . No Elliot Smith either for you introspective types. 

But probably the best band of the second half of the decade was also left off completely: The Killers. Specifically their second album Sam’s Town which could’ve taken out the title but in the least deserved a mention. I was heartened to learn that the readers of Rolling Stone also thought Sam’s Town ripped-off in the magazine’s list of the decade.

Without further complaining (by me anyway) we give you The Punch’s best albums of the decade.

Continue reading "The best albums of 09 and the decade" »

It’s not really a concept album, and their upcoming national mini-tour can’t really be labelled a musical, but the second release by the saucily-named Melbourne band Root! and the accompanying set of pub dates is one of the few innovative developments on our current musical landscape.

Self-described on their hysterically exhaustive Wikipedia entry as a cross between the Flying Burrito Brothers and The Fall, the most obvious way into understanding Root! is that lead singer DC Root used to be known as Humphrey B Flaubert, sharing the vocal duties with Ron “Hitler” Barassi in the legendary piss-taking rock band TISM, who almost went mainstream with tasteless ditties such as (He’ll Never Be An) Ol’ Man River and Greg! The Stop Sign.

It’s probably the last thing the band wants to read, this kind of Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson reminiscence about the past history of 20 per cent of its number - but the link I’d draw is hopefully a positive one, in that TISM produced songs which were lyrically hilarious and musically irritating, with their incessant electro synth sound, wheras Root! produce songs which are lyrically hilarious but actually rock.

Continue reading "Root: a musical celebration of our beloved national verb" »