MUSIC REVIEWS

Christmas music isn’t as easy to make as you might think. The classics are, well, the classics, while new content can be polarizing for the very reason that it hasn’t been playing in the background of every family Christmas for the past fifty years; however, in the new single/video combo …

You don’t need a lot of lyrical substance with a groove that is plenty communicative in its own right, and if there’s one track proving this beyond a reasonable doubt right now, it’s the new single “Hold On” from Qvntro. From the moment that we meet the sturdy bassline at …

We’re four minutes into the music video for the fifth installment in Sonarpilot’s The Mirage Project, titled “Cathedral,” and it’s as though a symphonic string section is overtaking the speakers with an electropop dynamic literally born in the heavens. There’s so much that we’ve already experienced in this song by now, …

International quarantining has inspired a lot of really compelling covers out of nowhere, and among the more intriguing I’ve had the chance to listen to this December, a gorgeous version of “Higher Love” from Kamoken and Malou Beauvoir has stood out as a particularly rare find. Stylishly exotic with its …

Bustling into focus gently but urgently, the first few strands of a grand harmony begin to form in “Poison Woman,” the opening cut of the debut solo album from Mauri Dark Dreams of a Middle-Aged Man. The energy here is oddly reflective before the lyrics have even entered the picture, and …

There’s a bit of sizzle on the riffage we come across in the new single “Heart on a Wire” from Lost Romance that reminds me of the proto-grunge era in northwest punk rock, and yet this Jersey City band is about as far away from a throwback unit as it …

“Here is the peace formula / Please take it my friends” offers a humble-toned Sankarshan Das in the chorus of his new single “The World Peace Formula,” much of his vocal getting absorbed by the grander harmony evolving from the strummed strings. His words are so simple, and their demands …

A life in the streets. A humbling experience. A moment of clarity. The story of redemption is one that has been told many times and many ways over the course of mankind’s existence, and in the new music video for his single “Order My Steps,” Kevin Phillips does his best …

Those who would tell you rock doesn’t work with the sleek pop hooks it used to in modern times just weren’t expecting a band like Pretty Awkward to debut in the last year, and with their new single “Bored,” the group puts an exclamation point on their meteoric rise to …

When you listen to Darren Michael Boyd’s new record Wonders Of The Invisible World, you know exactly how he feels. Perhaps by his own innate talent, or due to the self-released nature of the record without major label interference the anger and aggression seeps and lingers. Yet every set of …