Album Review: Laura Stevenson - Wheel

Album Grade: A

The adage goes ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover,’ but I would contest that a lot can be gleaned from an album cover. Laura Stevenson’s Wheel for example, implies the cyclical. The stages of the moon adorn the four corners while the focus is a circle of the same trees in various stages of bloom focused around a bare axle. The message is simple: everything is self-repeating. The days will change, the blooms may die, but they will always come back, glowing as vibrant as ever.

You know, if the Mayans are right, this is my last year-ending list, ever.

The original draft for this end-of-the-year synopsis saw a somewhat dissatisfied me attempting to relate the lack of late-December snow on the ground here in the Northeast to the seemingly incomplete feel of 2011 and its musical offerings. For this writer, 2011 ushered in quite a few much-anticipated releases that ended up falling far short of their predecessors (Battles, Lemuria, and Manchester Orchestra, to name just a few). It paid witness to the disbandments of Philadelphia's Snowing and Frank Turner's departure from Gallows, two longtime favorite bands of your ever-humble narrator. In writing this, I very nearly fell into an abyss of textual lamentation, centered around the simple fact that my 2011 top-ten list is but a sad skidmark in the wake of its beefy 2010 counterpart. But really, what good is it to whine and moan about what this year and music could have been? 2012 is already shaping up to be more promising, with scheduled releases from Every Time I Die, Joyce Manor, and Andrew Bird all dotting the early year forecast, not to mention my 21st birthday and yet another installment of summer Olympics (read: publicized females gymnastics) both looming on the horizon. And so, temporarily dropping the resentfulness of the year's more underwhelming moments, I present you with a handful of moments during which 2011 showed no signs of suck: Eric's Top Twelve Tracks of Twenty-Eleven.

Eli's First Annual Year End Album Tournament

Welcome, welcome, to Eli’s first annual “Year End Tournament.” Here I indulge in egregious amounts of pretentious tomfoolery, all in attempt to wrap up my final thoughts on music in 2011.

Album Review: Laura Stevenson and the Cans - Sit Resist

One of the several new writers that will soon be joining us, Eli is a consistent reviewer on SputnikMusic. However, he will now be joining us as a full time staff reviewer. He has plenty of experience with writing reviews, and will be covering a wide variety of genres.

In mid 2009, armed with an acoustic guitar and a dulcet croon, a young woman by the name of Laura Stevenson captured the hearts of an entire scene. With her EP, “Holy Ghost,” Laura Stevenson did in 15 minutes what many folk/indie artists could barely achieve in a length of twice that. Bursting with poise and personality, the EP captured a feeling of drama and urgency, whilst coming off a wholly fun and capricious. “Sit Resist” is her first full length, but even more so, it is solid, wonderful album that signifies what could possibly be a truly exceptional career.