Word: guitar
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...consummate, knob-twiddling expertise that you would expect of a two-time Grammy nominee. Huun Huur Tu's sparse, ethereal songs - where simple lutes like the doshpuluur and two-stringed fiddles like the igil form the typical accompaniment - are fleshed out with drum loops, cello, keyboard and guitar, but they are not overwhelmed. In haunting paeans like "Mother Taiga" or "Ancestors Call" the romance of the Tuvan steppe is potently concentrated...
...Klimax”—featuring sparse notes above middle C, screeching vocals, and slow tempo. “The Light That Failed” possesses progressively louder synthesizer screeches, distorted whispers, and a lack of any true melody, chorus, or lyrics; a repetitive guitar riff, rooted in minor chords, plays over a background sound that calls to mind water dripping from a faucet. Though this subtracts from the track’s overall musicality, these dark motifs balance the upbeat songs which come later, making the album more effective overall...
...California Zephyr,” a song about traveling on a Western railway, opens the album, and uses simple, sunny guitar and Ben Gibbard’s lighthearted vocals to set the expansive, American West scene. A rambling, pleasantly repetitive tune, “Zephyr” conveys a good sense of movement, as one can almost imagine peacefully sitting on the eponymous train, humming this tune as fields and hills stretch by. The chorus—“I’m transcontinental / 3,000 miles from home / I’m on the California Zephyr / watching America...
...retrospect, the drug-hazed guitar smashing of Kurt Cobain and ’90s Seattle grunge seems like the equivalent of pink bunny slippers compared to what his contemporaries in Norway were up to. Scandinavia’s coldest country made headlines last decade for its thriving second wave black metal scene—as bands like Mayhem and Gorgoroth drove concert-goers to frenzied bliss with wave after wave of shrieking vocals, aggressive tremolo-picking, and guitar-riffing distortion, some misguided fans went out to burn churches and commit savagely ritualistic murders, citing the music as an influence. When...
...emerge from that movement, sweater-clad, skinny-white-boy duo Kings of Convenience—otherwise known as Erlend Øye and Eirik Glambek Bøe—have found the most commercial success. Critical acclaim up to this point has been well-deserved: their delicate guitar strumming, occasionally infused with piano, horns, and violin, channels the pared-down acoustics of Pink Moon-era Nick Drake and warm harmonizing of Simon & Garfunkel into gentle, unassumingly beautiful melodies. Øye, the Paul Simon of the pair, sings in a slightly accented baritone about girls he?...