The Laconic

The conventional wisdom on Dinosaur Jr. is focused almost entirely on their sonics, which admittedly were devastating and influential. Other bands had never relinquished the force of electric guitars – Hüsker Dü were a galvanizing force, Sonic Youth reaffirmed that sheer noise had poetic power – but Dinosaur, through their laconic frontman, J Mascis, restored not just the idea of a guitar hero, but showed that underground rock could soar with the eloquence of a guitar hero, reeling from lovely leads to sheets of noise to tranquil chords.

Laconic and self-contained, Edward Wilson heads CIA covert operations during the Bay of Pigs. The agency suspects that Castro was tipped, so Wilson looks for the leak. As he investigates, he recalls, in a series of flashbacks, his father's death, student days at Yale (poetry; Skull and Bones), recruitment into the fledgling OSS, truncated affairs, a shotgun marriage, cutting his teeth on spy craft in London, distance from his son, the emergence of the Cold War, and relationships with agency, British, and Soviet counterparts. We watch his idealism give way to something else: disclosing the nature of that something else is at the heart of the film's narration as he closes in on the leak.

Allan Taylor - Songs for the Road
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC (tracks): 138 MB + Enhanced Video Clip: 219 MB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Stockfisch Records # SFR 357.9010.2 | Country/Year: Germany 2010
Genre: Folk, Rock | Style: Acoustic, Singer/Songwriter

…Stockfish continues to shine with its groundbreaking SACD technology. The precision and clarity of the stringed instrumentation is flawless, augmenting the acoustics without compromising the intended starkness. (…) Songs For The Road is an engaging album.

The Charlatans - Who We Touch
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 358 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Cooking Vinyl # COOKCD527P | Country/Year: UK 2010
Genre: Rock, Electronic | Style: Brit Pop

…It’s recognizably the Charlatans – it’s hard to disguise Tim Burgess’s laconic drawl or the light psychedelic pull of his melodies – but they’re unexpectedly abandoning their dad-rock handbook and taking risks, winding with their freshest, best album since they traded the Happy Mondays for the Rolling Stones.

The Church - Uninvited, Like The Clouds (2006) {Cooking Vinyl-True North TND432}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 425 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 143 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 16 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2006 Cooking Vinyl / True North Records | TND432
Rock / Neo-Psychedelia / Alternative / Indie

The Church, like their namesake, are capable of both beautiful and terrifying things. Uninvited, Like the Clouds, their seemingly hundredth album since 1980, has everything an adoring fan could want, and all the ammunition a detractor could carry. Steve Kilbey, Marty Willson-Piper, Peter Koppes, and newest member Tim Powles have constructed a bloated, beautiful, unsettling storm of a record that manages to celebrate improvisation and songcraft without any favoritism, resulting in their most cohesive record since 1992's underrated Priest = Aura.