I have to admit, sometimes it’s nice to not have to think too much about this stuff. I mean, c’mon — this is Chicago wildman Andre Williams, the dirtiest, funkiest, nastiest soul singer you’re ever in danger of mistaking for one of your grandpa’s old-timer friends…
You have to love that the band Teith explains that their name is pronounced “Keith,” as in Carradine, Richards, and Sweat. Makes me laugh everytime. The Oak City EP is the re-release of the band’s demo that made the MySpace rounds a while back…
Considering the band sounds just like him, Old Ghost should be glad Bob Dylan hasn’t sued for copyright infringement. Okay, so they don’t sound exactly like Bob, but unfortunately, that’s because they’re missing his songwriting ability…
With the music market now offering paths that circumvent the mechanisms of the music industry entirely, bands have the option of sidestepping the dog-and-pony show of glossy 8x10s and vapid music videos. By the same token, it doesn’t hurt to have some quirk, kink, or outright gimmick…
Side Two by Hail The Size is a comical, light-hearted take on dysfunctional relationships, explosive farts, and addiction. The whimsical and witty lyrics remind me a bit of Weird Al or even Flight of the Concords, but country music-style, if you can imagine…
On Chub, Austin band The Gary (none of the members of which, it should be said, are actually named, y’know, Gary) manage to take hold of three of my favorite elements of late-’90s indie-rock, the flat-sounding vocals and understated but still powerful guitars…
Looking for a new album to put on as you slowly drift to sleep? Or maybe you really wish Enya would one day pick up a guitar? If so, Foreverinmotion may be your next favorite band…
No, this wasn’t what I was expecting to hear coming from a bunch of guys who’ve made their names playing raw, punkish garage-rock in bands like The Monocles and American Sharks…
To celebrate its twenty-year anniversary, Sub Pop released a compilation album called Happy Birthday To Me, comprised mostly of tracks from 2008. Judging by the songs and the roster of artists, it’s clear that for all its grunge beginnings the label has, for better or for worse…
It’s insulting to think that one word could sum up an album. With the new CD from rap-metal pioneers Stuck Mojo, the one word is obvious: laughable. Decibel Magazine has already given The Great Revival the honorable distinction…
Working on a Dream may seem unfinished to many people. Bruce Springsteen has spent 40 years plumbing the depths for us; the hopeful, escapist youths of Born to Run and the prideful would-be laborers of Born in the U.S.A. spoke without metaphor to our struggle…
This Austin, Texas-based band has brought a tinge of country, rock, and blues on their latest recording, Let’s All Go To Bed, creating a pleasantly surprising sound even to a country novice. The album starts out with the rockin’ “Dynamite”…
I’ve heard bands before that blur the line between Southern-fried rock and the blues — hell, Stevie Ray Vaughan rode that line at times — but few obliterate it as completely as Austin’s Grady. They grab hold of a fistful of downhome Delta blues licks, drown ’em in cheap whiskey…
In my book, Austin’s Cotton Mather were one of the most sadly underrated bands of the late ’90s; while good-but-not-great people like Fastball got the hype and the spotlight, Robert Harrison and company’s absolute gem of a magnum opus, Kon Tiki, languished in obscurity…
How do you come up with what’s bound to be one of the rawest, most crushingly addictive rock songs to come out of this just-started year? If you’re American Fangs, you begin with a stomping, challenging rhythm and some guitar scrapes and throw on slurring, snarling, semi-threatening vocals that’re kin to Tim Armstrong…
I’m not completely sure what to make of the intertwined, fuzzy (well, partly), messy knot of an album that is the self-titled debut of Calgary foursome Women. When it first starts, with the haunted voices, fucked-up guitars, and thwacking drums of too-short “Cameras”…
Those hoping for Electric Psychedelic Sitar Headswirlers Vol. 88 may not get exactly what they’re looking for, but this is a fine release from Urck nonetheles. It’s a two-CD (it was issued on vinyl a while back) set of avant-garde, traditional, psych and electronic sounds…
The Reel Banditos are an instrumental trip-hop duo based in Hamburg. On Indochina, their second album, the Reel Banditos incorporate lots of unprocessed sounds in their material, from guitars to keyboards to all sorts of percussion…
They always say to never judge a book by its cover. That’s never been truer with the new CD by Rahway, Snitches Get Stitches. The cover looks like a Photoshop project that a band member did in school. Ten years ago…
Miss Autopsy is the one-man experimental rock band of singer/guitarist Steve Beyerink and is most definitely an acquired taste. There is nothing that I like about this Chicago-based musician’s third full-length release, The Hill…
On their second album, Guerillaton, Made in Mexico combines two styles you wouldn’t think could possibly combine coherently, but they do — namely, no-wave and reggaeton. And they make it work really well, in a highly original take on either genre…
Looking backwards from a musical landscape populated by plenty of heavy/soft dynamic shifts, fiery power-chord guitars, and yelled/sung melodies, it occurs to me now the thing that drew me to the whole emo thing wasn’t really the music…
What do you do when the big-name, influential as all get-out metalcore band you’re doing time in crashes and burns? In the case of From Autumn To Ashes’ Francis Mark and Rob Lauritsen, well, you get a chance to finally do that side project-type thing together that you’ve wanted to do for a while now…
Provo, Utah-based band Shark Speed released their first full-length, independent album, Sea Sick Music, this month at a CD release show in Provo, where the band handed out the album free to all who attended…
With Carving Desert Canyons, Scale The Summit does something few other instro-metal bands have been able to do, at least for me — they’ve taken the long-reviled guitar-shredder motif, stripped it of all the jaded, post-ironic hipsterness, set it on fire…
Here we go again. White boy falsetto vocals? Good! Extra dirty guitar riffs? Great! Drums played by a monkey on speed? Awesome! Add that together, and you have a 30-minute, 10-track, lo-fi dance-pop album that aims to please. Boston clearly loves their hometown heroes…
I think I’m overthinking this. I’ve been wrestling with The Points’ self-titled debut for way too long, trying to figure out something pithy to say about the Washington, DC, trio (Geo — guitar/vocals; Cobruh — drums/vocals; Rebecca — um, keyboards? really?)…
Die in June is Norwegian boy-band rockers Peel’s first release, and from the opening “Cutting Crew”-style keyboards, I knew this would be a chore. Honestly, I don’t even know if Peel is Buzz-radio-worthy…
I’ll admit that when it started, I was nervous. The bumping bass, the half-whispered (or half-muttered, maybe) vocals, the retro-sounding synths; it all made me wonder if Bright Nights, Bright Lights was headed straight into tepid, mid-’90s bland-rock territory…
The Coke Dares feature the rhythm section from the Magnolia Electric Company, but their stuff is nothing like Jason Molina’s — this is stripped-down punk rock, along the lines of Buzzcocks or the Minutemen but with a catchy garage-rock streak…
Austin’s Built By Snow’s sophomore release Mega injects a quick dose of Atari-influenced nerd-pop. I get the feeling these kids spent more time in arcades than J.J. Cooney, but instead of Fear, their headphones were jammin’ to The Cars and Cheap Trick while in battles with the Bishop…
I honestly didn’t think he’d be able to pull it off. After 2006’s mind-crushingly awesome Audition, with its paranoiac rhymes, punk-rock-ified beats, popcult-fueled riffs on suicide and revenge, and full-on angry-ass vibe, I figured nah, there was no way…
Long-running goofballs the New Duncan Imperials bring plenty of their inspired nonsense to their eigth album, End of Phase One. The band pilfers a multitude of styles, from garage to punk to ’50s rock, and cuts it all with the silliness and catchiness of the Replacements…
Minneapolis indie outfit Maps of Norway has released their second album, Die Off Songbird, touting somewhat elevated guitar ramblings and vocal presence over their first outing. Featuring ex-Vespertine Jeff Ball (drums) and Eric Hanson…
Ever since I first heard “Airport Surroundings” on NPR’s All Songs Considered back in December, I have not been able to get Loney, Dear out of my head. I waited patiently for almost two months to be able to have that particular song and others from the new album…
There’s a scene in H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine where the Time Traveler pushes his machine millions of years into the future and sits on a beach under a dying red sun. There, he watches life itself begin to fade, like a person with terminal cancer slipping off bit by bit…
“Look at me I’m the next big thing,” sings Crisis in Hollywood singer Adrian Snyder, and with his band’s anticipated debut album, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, he may be on his way. The band, which consists of Daniel Valery on guitars, Logan Berton on bass…
It’d be way, way easy to lump Golden Cities in with the whole guitar-heavy, spacey-atmospherics crowd, tag them as Explosions in the Sky 2.0 (3.5?), and move on. I mean, there’s a fair bit of doubled, echoey guitars on here…
Bay Area band Totimoshi is a power trio not afraid to sound much bigger than their numbers. Milagrosa, Totimoshi’s fifth album, is big, bombastic stuff. Jangly guitars mix well with a thumping bass and heavy…
Eyes At Half Mast is the latest release from Portland, Oregon’s Talkdemonic, originally a solo project (founding member Kevin O’Connor’s first shows used pre-recorded backing tracks), Talkdemonic blends hip-hop…
