Southern California hipsters have been flogging the roots-rock idiom since at least the mid-’60s, when every third musician who rolled out of Laurel Canyon and onto the Sunset Strip had an acoustic guitar and a song to sing. The golden age of this stuff happened in the seventies…
If you’re into different styles of music rolled into one album, then you will definitely fall for this band. Teedo, which is made up of Teedo Bilecky (lead vocalist), Saeko Terano (keys and backing vocals), and Oweinama Biu (bass and backing vocals), have recently released their first full-length…
More than thirty years into his career, Glenn Mercer (best known from the Feelies) has released his first solo album, Wheels in Motion. Most of the people he recruited to play on the album are former Feelies, and as a result the album sounds a lot like what the Feelies might sound like…
I honestly didn’t figure it’d ever happen. Once Weezer bassist Matt Sharp’s side project-turned-fulltime gig The Rentals faded from view, I assumed, somewhat sadly, that, well, that was it. Return of the Rentals was the tongue-in-cheek…
Have you ever taken enough Tylenol PM to become drowsy, but not enough to kill the throbbing pain between your eyes? That’s pretty much what listening toThe New Ancients feels like. Oh, don’t get me wrong…
Miracle Mile is a musical enigma. One listen to their latest release, Glow, makes you wonder if you’ve stumbled across an untapped musical gem or if you’ve just spent the last thirty minutes listening to lyrical Muzak…
The Pacific Northwest was such a mecca for churning, powerhouse guitar rock in the ’90s that it seemed to have completely switched gears in the following decade. But it didn’t really happen. Watching the likes of Death Cab, Modest Mouse, and Minus the Bear rise in popularity…
I needed a CD to both fall asleep and wake up to. I have a feeling Ilad’s National Flags would give me nightmares, though, as dark and ambient as it attempts to be. I remember once I fell asleep to Wilco’s A Ghost is Born…
Alright, so I’m pretty favorably disposed, these days, to any band that can do the D.I.Y. thing, no fancy-shmancy computers and whatnot involved, and pull it off. Oddly, I’ve found myself yearning for the days of hand-cut 7″ sleeves…
Speaker Speaker is a three-piece post-punk band from Seattle. The band’s style is very much within the ’90s post-punk template, but being in the tradition isn’t a bad thing if you make it interesting, which they do…
This is almost too easy; it’s like eating my favorite candybar, seriously. I’ve been impressed as hell by local punk kids Something Fierce since I first caught their full-length effort, Come For The Bastards, but the blazing rawk fury…
With sounds as elusive as their whereabouts, The Sleeping Pimps strut their way through their first self-produced, three-song EP. The Sleeping Pimps is a flashback to the days of free love and flower power…
At times, Plague Park, the debut album by Handsome Furs, sounds almost untouched by human hands. That seems a strange thing to me, as I find a close affinity between this album and Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska…
Guff has a remarkable ability to turn gold (well, okay, aluminum) into lead. On their album Symphony of Voices, they take every possible opportunity to screw themselves over in the studio. Their melodies are inoffensive…
Do you like your beer cold? Do you like your chicks hot? Do you like to pump your fist out the window of your bitchin’ ’79 Camaro when Judas Priest comes on the radio? If you answered “yes,” to any of those questions…
This pop-rock female songwriter, producer, and collaborator (wow, that’s a mouthful) hails from New Jersey, and the first time I listened to Deb Ferrara’s album, Anything But Ordinary, I was a bit skeptical…
It only takes about the first five seconds of the first track of their it’s-been-fuckin-long-enough-y’all debut CD, “No More Good Songs,” for Houston indie-rockers Bring Back The Guns to demonstrate why they regularly top local critics’ lists…
Strung Out sets out a big task for themselves: bridging metal, punk, and prog-rock, three approaches which at one point were mutually exclusive, though not anymore (for better or for worse). They set metal riffing atop a rhythm section that switches effortlessly…
Okay, I give. I’ve been listening to The Riff Tiffs’ Afflictinitus for several weeks now, off and on, and I’ve had quite a time getting a handle on it, somehow. I don’t know how to take these four H-town kids — are they part of the whole nu-space-rock movement…
The name My Loving Tiger gives you no hint of what to expect of this band’s self-released EP, Problem Set. What you’ll find is poppy (yet mellow) rock filled with quirky keyboard harmonies and well-written lyrics…
While New Erections, the latest disc from SoCal hardcore freaksters The Locust, is not exactly tame, it doesn’t quite bear the same oppressive weight of their previous material. While certainly heavy, daunting, and at times frightening…
One of Iron and Wine’s strengths is the band’s ability to grab hold of a humble, deceptively simple motif, idea, or sound and just repeat it ’til it’s driven like a railroad spike through your skull. That’s not as bad as it sounds, honest…
It’s amazing what a shift in the musical climate can do to your supposed musical singularity: e.g., fuck you over completely. Death of a Party could once have been as easily lauded as condemned for the very thing that now knees their necks to the ground…
Bobcrane represents the foray of Ryan H, better known as the mastermind behind the epic drone-rock unit Vopat, into the world of electronic music. The basic element of Bobcrane’s sound is what would be labeled as ’90s industrial…
The quintet Spraydog, comprising of Steve Robson (vocals, guitar), Maria Fontana (vocals), Phil Tyler (guitar), Cath Tyler (bass), and Chris Lanigan (drums), hail from across the pond…
Drummer Jason Tortorice, guitarist Erik Westfall, and bassist Johnny Todd made some of Houston’s most ambitious and endearingly wacky hard rock as the Slurpees, and then as the Squishees after being threatened with legal action by 7-11…
The music industry loves to stumble upon bands like Daphne Loves Derby. This Seattle-based trio churn out the kind of polished, amphitheater-ready indie-rock that would appeal to the Death Cab for Cutie set. Lead singer Kenny Choi is easy on the eyes…
I’ve had this record on rotation for weeks, mostly because I wanted to come up with something better than this: “Yeah, it’s okay, but it sounds a lot like the last record and not really in a surprisingly illuminating way or anything…
One CD plus two great bands equals nothing but politics-filled punk/ska fun, doesn’t it? Citizen Fish and Leftover Crack. Two great bands, one split album, expectations are high. 15 tracks with Citizen Fish covering Choking Victims’ “Money”…
Bernard Allison, son of bluesman Luther Allison, plays in a more contemporary style than his dad on his new record, Energized: Live in Europe. Most of the songs here are in a funk or rock style as opposed to a traditional blues groove…
“Helsinki Vampires are ready to take over the world with a sleazy blend of post- apocalyptic rock’n’roll … and they’re out for YOUR blood, baby”…
Tired of the modern metal scene? Do bands like P.O.D. and Hoobastank make you yearn for the power metal days of the ’80s? Look no further; Space City Rock has got a band for you!…
Departing partly (but not entirely) from previous breezy and sunny sounds of earlier albums Birds Make Good Neighbors and Make Out, The Rosebuds pleasantly surprise us…
“Johnny Depp has a band?” I’ve heard that question a lot lately. He doesn’t really have a band anymore, no, but he did have one. In fact, he’s had a few bands…
Sometimes, little children, prayers do get answered. A while back, we at SCR had a weird-looking little CD in our mailbox from an Ohio-based one-man-band of sorts…
I’m trying to cut these guys some slack, honest. The Inevitable Backlash’s new Sex For Safety EP bears a sticker that says “Featuring Members of Rollins Band + Saccharine Trust,” and technically, that’s true…
Fake Problems’ comparisons to fellow Floridian musicians Against Me! are too obvious, so I’ll do my best to avoid comparing them to each other. But think Against Me! without a political slant and with fewer exclamation points…
Though songwriter Mark Matos was raised in central California, he now resides in San Francisco, and in between, he seems to have stopped in Tucson to make Goodbye, Oklahoma. His vehicle Campo Bravo owes debts to Calexico…
“I put the needle down and in between the crackles and pops, I hear the way it used to be.” This is the way it used to be: catchy pop songs…
Mirrored, the debut album by Battles, has been hotly anticipated, partly because it took nearly three years to finally appear, but mostly because the band unites…
