★★★★★
Reigning Sound is a band whose time has come. For 10 years now, Greg Cartwright and a myriad of bandmates have released consistently great music for the cream of the garage/punk label crop (Sympathy for the Record Industry, In the Red, Goner), but calling them a garage or punk band feels drastically limited in scope...
- www.pastemagazine.com
2011-11-24
★★★★★
In a mere five years, Memphis's aptly-named Reigning Sound have managed to cut some of the finest rock 'n' roll albums in recent history. The brainchild of former Oblivion and Compulsive Gambler Greg Cartwright, their first two discs, Break Up.....
- www.offbeat.com
2010-11-09
★★★★★
Recently I read It Still Lives, Amanda Petrusich's hapless attempt to seek out and define that music now labelled as 'Americana' (I didn't buy it; I borrowed it from the library). Between her many descriptions of atrocious meals eaten alone I was struck by just how limited was her definition of the form, effectively restricting it to anything that sounds distant and/or mysterious enough to be mentioned in Greil Marcus's Mystery Train, itself an imagining of a cultural tradition...
- thequietus.com
2010-11-09
★★★★★
One of Memphis' most popular local celebrities during the 1960s was television personality Watson Davis, who donned death-pallor make-up, exaggerated fangs, and a dapper Dracula tux to become Sivad. He cracked corny jokes and introduced cornier monster movies on WHBQ-TV's "Fantastic Features" and even recorded a few novelty hits, including the stiffly swinging "Sivad Buries Rock and Roll"...
- pitchfork.com
2010-09-11
★★★★★
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- spin.com
2010-08-25
★★★★★
The Reigning Sound is the antithesis of fabricated pop music. Channeling pain, love, angst, and soul through Greg Cartwright's passionate, dynamic songs, Love and Curses stands alongside Time Bomb High School as their finest hour to date. Cartwright relocated to Asheville, North Carolina from his longtime base in Memphis, and the band followed. The current version of the quartet is probably its most proficient musical alignment...
- www.popmatters.com
2010-02-11
★★★★★
Greg Cartwright qualifies as a Memphis great. His ear for hooky, three-minute pop and penchant for heartbreak songs translated well when Reigning Sound backed Shangri-La Mary Weiss on 2007's Dangerous Game. Since then, the singer/guitarist has settled into his talents after nearly a decade with the Memphis-bred quartet. Love and Curses offers less blown-out rock & roll anthems than 2004's Too Much Guitar but more refinement, reflection, and soul...
- www.austinchronicle.com
2009-10-31
★★★★★
These guys' last record, Too Much Guitar (2004), presented us with a thick spectacle of noise. What that means in this day and age, I'm not sure, but listening back to the best songs on that record is like hearing a band gallantly coming abreast to its own tailspin...
- www.cokemachineglow.com
2009-09-19
★★★★★
In the five years since Reigning Sound dropped Too Much Guitar, garage rock has gone from being a fetish lionized by dusty-fingered vinyl hunters to the default setting of an army of ambitious young rockers. Sinking coin into 1960s reproduction Gibsons and copping moves from the Nuggets comps now seems to be the application process for acceptance at Ivy-League indie labels across the country...
- dustedmagazine.com
2009-09-12
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