No ladies need apply to this edition of the Indie Round-Up - it's all guys, all the time.
Steve Northeast, Inside
Steve Northeast crafts energetic and emotional hard rock songs loaded with raspy guitars and cataclysmic rhythms. He puts a lot of emotion into the songs, and that, together with the deep engagement with what's going on the world, means that at times he risks overwhelming the production's generous musicality - and the excellent guitar work - with lyrics that bend towards earnest cliche. But at their best, the songs evoke the David Bowie of Heroes and the Soundgarden of the '90s. Favorites: "The Way It Is," "Out of Here," and the power ballad "Phoenix."
Listen at the website.
Jann Klose, Reverie
Jann Klose makes complex but accessible chamber pop with intelligent lyrics and contagious rhythms. Songs like "Doing Time" and "Clouds" have a European and sometimes Beatlesque sensibility. (It doesn't hurt that Klose's voice sounds a bit like Paul McCartney's.) The German-born, South African-raised singer-songwriter, now based in the Bronx, has been a theatrical performer, and he has a fine feel for how to arrange his songs with "stageworthy" effectiveness, easily slipping in horns, strings, reeds, and more unusual instruments. The touch is light; a song like "All These Rivers" may remind you of some of Sting's solo work, while the gentle "Remember Your Name" could have come out of southern California in the 1970s. Overall, a sweet salve for troubled times. Listen or buy.
The Alternate Routes, The Brooklawn Session
This disc is an acoustic re-recording of The Alternate Routes' superb debut album Good and Reckless and True, with the same eleven songs in a different order. At the moment, it's available only at concerts, and since the band is between tours right now, you'll have to borrow mine if you want it. (Low hourly rates!) You can, however, hear a couple of the tracks at their Myspace page. The disc has a sort of distant, ghostly, furry-wall-of-sound quality, very pleasing if you're in a coffeehouse mood yet want to hear good songs that aren't self-indulgent like a lot of acoustic singer-songwriter fare. Why am I writing about it if you can't buy it? Because it's another opportunity to tell you that you should really check out this Bridgeport, Connecticut band. Go out of your way if you have to; take an alternate route.
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