GUEST REVIEW: Fleet Foxes- Helpless Blues

The Fleet Foxes’ sound is undeniably and immediately recognizable, haunting listeners’ ears ever since their self-titled debut album came out back in 2008, garnering positive reviews from just about every major outlet in the country- as well as overseas. Helplessness Blues is exactly the follow-up you were hoping for, unless you were more thrilled at lead vocalist Robin Pecknold’s comments about how he wanted the band to move in a more jam-band-y direction. While Fleet Foxes certainly have the folk-musical pizzazz to cut a record like that, the real beauty of their sound springs from the group’s harmonic skill and Pecknold’s minstrel-esque vocals, which always sound like they’re coming at you from just beyond the edge of the trees.

Helplessness Blues is a triumphant twelve-track album, pulsing with the sound of mandolins, containing passionate lyrics about apples, and possessing the quiet thrill of a panoramic view from the top of a mountain.

GUEST REVEW: The Kills – Blood Pressures (by Devin Goodwin)

It’s been three years since The Kills last cut a record. With Allison Mosshart moonlighting as the she-wolf front woman of Jack White’s blues-rock outfit The Dead Weather, and Jamie Hince only making headlines for dating supermodeltrainwreck Kate Moss, it was anybodies’ guess as to what The Kills’ fourth studio album would sound like. Since their bare-bones garage style debuted in 2003 with Keep On Your Mean Side, The Kills have steadily cultivated their sound, making true believers of fans with 2005’s No Wow, and riding that success to a new high-water mark with Midnight Boom (2008).

Now devotees can breathe a sigh of relief, because ‘VV’ (Mosshart) and ‘Hotel’ (Hince) have lost none of their black magic chemistry during the off-time. Blood Pressures picks up all the familiar pieces of The Kills’ style- pre-programmed beats, and stuttering guitar rhythms entwined in Mosshart’s raspy chameleon vocals- and blasts off, coming across as bigger, sharper, and more complex.