Being a music jour­nal­ist means I review more than my fare share of albums. I tend to pick bands or gen­res that I like as I don’t like to write neg­a­tive reviews (unless I have to, of course). I’m prob­a­bly the Anti-Snark, an enigma among many music writ­ers, and that’s fine with me. I feel you can still offer con­struc­tive crit­i­cism with­out rip­ping someone’s art to shreds. That said, it is fun to read bit­ing reviews of really shitty albums.

Here are links to some highly-rated or rec­om­mended albums:

Umlaut — Umlaut “You need to lis­ten to this Aussie band, pronto — an LSD-infused breath of fresh air.”

Queens of the Stone Age — Queens of the Stone Age (reis­sue) “You’re solid gold, I’ll see you in hell.”

Alain Johannes — Spark “There is dark­ness here; there is also light, and many, many sparks.”

Guano Padano — Guano Padano “Spaghetti West­ern rock at its finest.”

Mini Man­sions — Mini Man­sions “A jour­ney through sounds and mem­o­ries, visu­als and feelings.”

Bad Reli­gion — The Dis­sent of Man “Angst, pol­i­tics, punk — some things don’t die with age.”

A fully updated list of album reviews can be found on my Con­se­quence of Sound Profile.