Dave Matthews Band – Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King

For all the immortality it imparts, rock & roll has a way of taking its practitioners before their time. Like the Who, 
 Metallica, and many more before them, the Dave Matthews Band have faced the sudden loss of a founding member: Saxophonist LeRoi Moore died last August from injuries incurred in an ATV 
accident, midway through the recording of their latest album. His spirit — and his sound — looms large, however, on Big Whiskey. The GrooGrux King of the title references Moore, as does the figure at the center of Whiskey’s intricate cover art (drawn by 
Matthews himself); his sweet, solitary sax flourishes even bookend the album. Read The Full Review

Iggy Pop – Preliminaires

What do you get if you cross the godfather of punk with nihilistic enfant terrible of French literature, Michel Houellebecq? No, the answer is not comprehensive cover if you drive over a cliff in a fit of weltschmerz, but Preliminaires, a curious, often haunting little Anglo-French album with strands of jazz, blues, country and electro-pop that contemplates the futility of human existence through songs with titles such as Nice to Be Dead. Read the Full Review

Rancid – Let the Dominoes Fall

Though they may look a little goofy still rocking spiked Mohawks and tattered attire as men in their early-to-mid-40s (save for new drummer, 31-year-old Branden Steineckert, formerly of the Used), Bay Area stalwarts Rancid display a sense of true musical growth on their long-awaited seventh full-length, Let the Dominoes Fall. The album marks their first work together as a band since 2003’s Indestructible—released on Hellcat in conjunction with Warner Bros.—and is a most welcome return to their roots on the Epitaph label, where they initially rose to fame through such seminal new school punk favorites as 1994’s Let’s Go and 1995’s …And Out Come the Wolves. Read the Full Review

Paolo Nutini – Sunny Side Up

Sunny Side Up is a considerably less well-groomed affair than Nutini’s massively successful debut These Streets . There’s no polish or politesse here. Instead, Nutini plays the raggedly soulful Paisley boy on his homecoming, dispensing warm words of wisdom and heartfelt hippie sentiment to his nearest and dearest. Simple Things rides a chick-a-boom rhythm while doling out homely hokum about “going round my Mum’s house for my tea”, while you could imagine Harry Belafonte crooning High Hopes.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/may/17/paolo-nuttini-sunny-side-up

Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas – II

Fortunately, II  isn’t a letdown– assuming you don’t count its lack of immediacy as a disappointment. On the first Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas album, eight out of 13 tracks ran less than six minutes, and most of them gave you a pretty good idea of where they were going right away. Here, only one of the eight songs clocks in under seven-and-a-half, and the standard structure relies on slow-build compositions that stretch out, decompress, and mutate; they don’t so much segue from track to track as they melt into each other. And while it might feel a little like a marathon anywhere other than the dancefloor, there’s more than enough going on over the course of a track– instruments warping themselves into new beats, new riffs, and new melodies– to give it a certain dynamism. Read the Full Review