Reviews for The 13th Floor. Click on the link to read the full review.

Grimes
Visions
4AD
Visions is described by the record label as “a phantasmic state for the deep listener, sourcing the long forgotten spells running alongside humans for centuries and forcing them through a hyper-futuristic filter”. The PR might be a bit rubbish, but this 12-track album from prolific artist Grimes (aka Claire Boucher) is anything but.

Beth Jean Houghton & the Hooves of Destiny
Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose
EMI
Despite a penchant for wearing animal suits, funny hats and fake moustaches, Beth Jeans Houghton and her band The Hooves of Destiny can’t be dismissed as trendy hipster-fodder. Over a relatively standard indie background of noodling guitars and clattering drums, Houghton’s voice (distinctly English, in an old-fashioned way) sings melodies the likes of which may not have been heard since the 1960s folk revival.

The Amazing
Gentle Stream
Subliminal
Shimmering guitars are reminiscent of light playing on the water, Gunrup’s voice floats like a spring leaf in an eddy, and cymbal chimes drift like a warm breeze.

Reviews for The 13th Floor. Click on the link to read the full review.

Gemma Ray
Island Fire
Shock
When she plays live, Ray's signature sound-enhancing device is a carving knife which she glides over her guitar strings. In A Vanity Fair interview Ray says “it’s responsive to the tiniest tweak, and it’s never the same twice. Sometimes you get a resonating squeal, and sometimes you hear a low cello drone. I quite like the spontaneity of it.” It’s this attention to detail, and attention to drama, that makes Ray something special.

Lydia Cole
Me and Moon
While Blind Boy at first sounds like a downbeat song about disappointment in love, it’s bubblegum pop compared to ten songs that follow it. Titles like Love And Loss And Love, and What We Were set the tone for an album that conjures up the image of a young woman in a moth-eaten sweater sitting on her bed with her knees drawn up against her chest.

The Cranberries
Roses
Cooking Vinyl
None of the songs on Roses have the urgency or anger of Linger or Zombie, leaving O’Riordan’s patchy lyric-writing up for closer examination. “It’s raining in my heart every time we are apart”, “got a pain in my heart whenever we are apart” and “have you ever have an empty heart? Did you think it’d ever fall apart?” are lyrics from three separate songs.

Reviews for The 13th Floor. Click on the link to read the full review.

Julien Dyne
Glmpse
Rythmethod
If you enjoy vocals, lyrics, hooks, riffs and melodies, Julien Dyne’s Glimpse isn’t for you. But if you like being challenged by music, if you’re partial to a spot of abstract jazz, and if you want to give your ears a workout, these nineteen beat-driven tracks will be right up your alley.

Grant P Chilcott
Sings Mitchell Parish
Ode Records
Grant P Chilcott, also known as Wentworth Brewster, has been keeping the torch of crooner-style singing aflame in New Zealand for twenty five years. He’s recorded with The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Strings, performed with the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra, and sung in exotic countries around the world. In this album he turns his talents to re-imagining the songs of Mitchell Parish (1900 – 1993), the Lithuania-born immigrant turned Tin Pan Alley lyricist.

Vintage Trouble
The Bomb Shelter Sessions
Shock
With their mid-century recording techniques and influences, Hollywood-based Vintage Trouble are certainly retro, but they’re not up to much mischief. Sounding like The Detroit Cobras without Rachel Nagy’s cut-loose vocals or The Black Keys without the devil-may-care attitude, Vintage Trouble have a hot look but their brand of rock n’ soul lacks heat.

Ana Tijoux
La Bala
France received many political refugees during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship of Chile during the 1970s and 80s. In 1977 Anamaria Merino was born in Paris to an exiled Chilean father and a French mother. In the 90s democracy was restored to Chile and the Merino family relocated there, where Anamaria changed her name to Ana Tijoux and immersed herself in the hip hop scene. Tijoux fronted rap group Makiza before striking it out on her own with impressive results (her second album, 1977, was nominated for a Grammy).

Reviews for The 13th Floor. Click on the link to read the full review.

The Black Keys
El Camino
Nonesuch
With sleek, sexy and surprising cover art of people-movers both retro and modern, a gleaming silver sticker on the front instructing you to ‘play loud’, and eleven smouldering tracks within, the latest album from Ohio duo The Black Keys is this summer’s biggest fire hazard. The boys are back with their trademark dirty blues rock sound, but this time they’ve arrived in a cloud of rocket smoke and a blaze of glitter in the middle of a dusty road...

David Lynch
Crazy Clown Time
Sunday Best
You may not realise how much of David Lynch’s music you’ve already heard. He shares writing credits for the song In Heaven (Eraserhead, 1977), wrote lyrics for Julee Cruise, created music for Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive and more, and has worked on several musical collaborations...

Fagan and the People
Admiral of the Narrow Seas
Big Ears
Admiral Of The Narrow Seas has been a long time coming from 1985 RIANZ Top Male Vocalist of The Year winner Andrew Fagan. Spanning ten years, several recording studios and vast oceans, these twelve tracks are like the contestants at a Miss Kaitaia beauty pageant – some flawed, each different but all united by their homegrown beauty...

Thrice
Major/Minor
Vagrant
Though Thrice claim they’re not a Christian band, singer Dustin Kensrue’s lyrics are rife with Christian imagery, and the catchy Blinded could be read either as a curious kind of love song, or as the words of thanks from a sinner repenting before God...

Bjork
Biophilia
Little Indian
Despite the innovative platform used to share the album, the music itself feels much like the same old Bjork – still enchanting and original, but sparser and more abstract than before...

Reviews for The 13th Floor. Click on the link to read the full review.

The Ettes
Wicked Will
Shock Entertainment
The Black Belles, The Black Keys, The Detroit Cobras, Jace Everett, The Dead Weather.
Deathproof, The Switchblade Sisters, Girl on a Motorcycle, Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Leather, denim, gingham, bouffant hair, pussy bows.
If any of the above appeal to you, hop in your Chevy and zoom down to your local record store to pick up Wicked Will, the fourth album from Nashville-based garage rock trio The Ettes...

CSS
La Liberación
Sub Pop
City Grrrl sounds like The Donnas with glo sticks, and Echo Of Love provides some pleasantly unexpected melodies before star track You Could Have It All bursts in with some pure pop power. With delicate piano trickling over squelchy bass, solid riffs and uncharacteristically emotionally honest lyrics, CSS display an evolution in their sound on this track for the first time...

L/O/N/G
American Primitive
Glitterhouse
The ten spacious tracks on their debut ‘American Primitive’ are a seamless fusion of alt country and laid-back electronica. Sounding as though they could have been penned by a modern-day Neil Young, these steamy, dreamy songs are both contemporary and inescapably rural. Eckman’s BA in Philosophy and Huber’s classical background contribute to songs that are long and atmospheric but always layered and stirring.

The Travelling Band
Screaming is Something
Shock
On their second album Screaming Is Something the hirsute Adam Gorman and Jo Dudderidge share vocal duties. Rather unfortunately, they both have the kind of clear, pure voices that would have made them prime candidates for a boys’ Cathedral choir. Many of these darkly textured songs would instead have benefitted from a cool growl...

Evaline
Woven Material
Shock
The album features the cool urban desolation of Radiohead, the soaring highs and lows of Muse and the high drama of My Chemical Romance...

Kasabian
Velociraptor!
Sony
If Kasabian was an English schoolboy his blazer would be more highly-decorated than Hugh Grant’s bedpost...

Reviews for The 13th Floor. Click on the link to read the full review.

Bonjah
Go Go Chaos
Shock Entertainment
They may be New Zealand’s best kept secret, but rootsy rock band Bonjah are Rolling Stone’s 2011 ‘Artist to Watch’...

Vetiver
The Errant Charm
Sup Pop
Vetiver (named after a useful and non-psychoactive perennial grass) allude to the 70s from their softly-psychedelic cover through to their ten soft and sun-kissed tracks...

Hellsongs
Minor Misdemeanors
Lovely Records
Until young female singer Siri Bergnéhr had a stroke late last year, Hellsongs were a group of metal-loving Swedish musicians with a pop sensibility...

Reviews for The 13th Floor. Click the link to read the full review.

The Sami Sisters
Happy Heartbreak!
Like a time capsule with influences ranging from nana to Rihanna, this album is filled with exciting discoveries. In these three Onehunga-raised Irish/Indian sisters, we may just have found the real sound of New Zealand...

Hollie Cook
Hollie Cook
Mr. Bongo
London born singer Hollie Cook had her first taste of the limelight when family friend Ari Up encouraged her to sing backing vocals on the EP Revenge of the Killer Slits...

Cairo Knife Fight
II
Liberation
If you like your heavy rock served up with some sexy on the side, this is the band for you...

The Howling Bells
The Loudest Engine
Shock Entertainment
What’s really sexy about Stein is her intimate voice, which can glide from soft and husky to let-loose loud, all while retaining a quality makes her sound as though she’s whispering in your ear...