After more than fifteen years of dedicated musicianship, Ted Leo is still searching for his voice. His roots are in D.C. hardcore, but his music frequently draws on folk and British mod-rock. He’s political, but he has neither the proletarian singability…
The Brokedowns play hardcore with touches of metal; their sound on New Brains for Everyone isn’t unusual, but their singer is — he’s a more subtle vocalist than most. Throughout the album, he sounds like he’s enjoying himself…
My first mistake was telling Space City Rock editor Jeremy that he could send me whatever he wanted. My second mistake was not getting completely drunk before listening to Beyond the Valley of the Barbarellatones…
It’s hard to believe Nicole Atkins is only 27 years old. I was so sure that the voice coming out of my stereo belongs to someone who’s already blown out the candles on her 50th birthday cake. And I do mean that wholeheartedly as a compliment…
ADULT. is a duo from Detroit (Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus) that, appropriately enough, plays electronic music. ADULT. recorded Why Bother, their fourth album, after a third member left the group. Their beats use lots of distorted keyboard and synth loops…
You would have to ground a teenager and then lock him in his room with nothing but a laptop and some vintage Playboys to get music as outrageous, hormonally-charged, and wonderful as this. But Toof is no seventeen year-old wanker…
I remember seeing Dashboard Confessional back when they did the “we’re still bros” tour with Further Seems Forever — Jason Gleason was singing for FSF, and Dan Hoerner was part of Dashboard at the time. The band that played right before FSF was Seville…
I wouldn’t have guessed it, I’ll admit — I never figured that NYC noiserockers Parts & Labor could top 2006’s excellent Stay Afraid, much less do it so effortlessly. But here we are with Mapmaker, which truly lives up to its name…
Look no further than Morello’s own interpretation of their musical styling to discover what their new album is all about: “Morello’s debut release Twelve Ways to Breathe is the Irish-Italian answer to American fans who worship Emo/Screamo bands…”
Love Me Destroyer, a four-piece from Colorado, fall somewhere between Jawbox and Braid, with a little thrash thrown in. On The Things Around Us Burn, the songs are mostly protest music in the style of Guy Pizzicato…
Where in the hell did this come from? (Okay, apparently from Portland, and from the ashes of Wisconsin pop-punkers Ben Grim, but you get my meaning.) Get past the goofy cover art concept…
Steve Albini is ruining music. True, he’s probably made a hundred good records and more than a few great ones, but that’s exactly the problem: he’s made so many good records, so many well-loved records…
You can sneer and the stick the ambient-noise CDs in the car stereo all you want, but it’s a fact: done right, nothing beats a good power-pop song. And with I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On, Silverlake/Echo Park popsters The Broken West…
It’s funny, but while Arbouretum’s “Pale Rider Blues” swipes the title of a classic Eastwood flick, it sure as hell sounds like the band picked the wrong one to swipe from. This is far closer to High Plains Drifter, for my money…
Unsane are a very simple band: the NYC threesome have spent their entire career perfecting the heavily syncopated and quite catchy midtempo hardcore that they developed in the late ’80s alongside Helmet and Rapeman…
They just don’t make ’em like this anymore (well, other than this CD, that is). With a tremendous range of musical styling, Motion Commmotion’s newest self-titled EP presents a landscape of spectral talents. From the violin and clarinet to rocking bass guitar…
The Mains are nothing special, but for some reason, everything on The Higher You Get, The Higher You Get works perfectly together. Luckily, the guitar riffs don’t sound like any band in particular, but rather are just what I’d expect from a rock band…
Mabou plays instrumental rock heavily in the My Bloody Valentine vein. They experiment with various kinds of distortion and noise. Their record, Our Last Sleep is Our Final Awakening, is almost entirely instrumental. They play trance-inducing grooves…
I have to admit that I was primed for disappointment with this album — I’ve seen and heard too many reunions-after- long-hiatuses end badly. Despite my doubts, Lifetime is back, and it’s like they never left…
Drummer Zach Hill and guitarist Spencer Seim of Hella gained cult fame for the jaw-dropping density and virtuosity of their work as a duo in the early 2000s, but by 2005 they were showing signs…
Analog Heartbreak made me a little nervous with the liner notes to their self-titled EP. Not only do they thank the big J.C., but the cover features a tattoo bearing the legend “Deo Vindice,” or “protected by god.” Scary stuff for us secular types who still remember when people wore Stryper t-shirts…
Stemage bills itself as “Metroid Metal,” and I have no freakin’ idea what that means. It must be an inside joke, especially since Stemage is the creation of Grant Henry. Mr. Henry plays all the instruments, writes all the lyrics, and does all the singing…
I hate to damn with faint praise, but after repeated listens to the reissue of The Sleeping’s 2004 album Believe What We Tell You, I’m afraid I have to — I’ve got to confess that while the album’s okay, I’m not sure it really merited reissuing…
Okay, so this is really weird. I’d heard of Ragged Hearts off and on for the past few years, so I picked up their debut full-length, Her Bright White Light, on a recent CD-buying binge, figuring I’d see what they were like…
Mess Up the Mess is a hysterical faux-“riot grrl” band from D.C. whose jangly brand of “messcore” reminds me of a prison break from the kitten pound. The music’s mostly in a Buzzcocks-cum-Pixies style, but the harpsichord/keyboard accompaniment truly completes the package…
It’s not every day you randomly run across a noted female blues/roots artist, especially one who has several albums with the Austin-based Antone’s label. Being a Texas gal myself, I’m automatically wary…
It seemed for a while that Victory Records was shifting its focus to more melodic bands, like Spitalfield and Bayside and eschewing the hardcore days of yore. Not the case, it seems. Comeback Kid’s Broadcasting pretty much proves…
No, I’ve never taken drugs (aside, mind you, from an accidental high I got just from being at a House of Pain/Cypress Hill concert, but that wasn’t intentional…). No real good reason why not…
Unsparing Sea is the perfect name for this band. This is staring at a slate-grey ocean kind of music, Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant’s Woman kind of music…
San Francisco songwriter Dean Tomihira challenges audiences to find just one song they like on his eponymous band’s debut full-length, Play Dead…
This Moment In Black History play the same hybrid of garage rock and hardcore punk that has served the Wrangler Brutes and Houston’s own Fatal Flying Guilloteens, but they have some practicing…
“It’s true there is a color divide / It’s not black or white, it’s green.” Nice. I already dig this band’s worldview. I’ve not heard Smoke Or Fire’s previous LP…
Damn, I’ve missed stuff like this. Back when I was a mere musical tadpole, smart, self-deprecating, guitar-heavy indie-rock bands seemed to rule the freakin’ world…
Make no mistake about it, Jihad Jerry, aka Gerry Casale, is Devo, and Devo is the ’80s. The opening bars of “The Time is Now,” the first track on Mine Is Not a Holy War, slap you back to that most maligned…
Karrie Hopper sings old-fashioned sounding folk songs reminiscent of Palace-era Will Oldham. She has a pretty, unaffected alto voice that sounds somewhat innocent and childlike…
Straight up, I’m not really a huge Bayside fan. I had heard of the band before but never really heard much from them up until now. Obviously, I therefore have no real idea how The Walking Wounded stacks up against their previous output…
I know more than a bit premature, but with The Light Divides it sure feels like Winterpills have crafted one of the best damn albums of 2007. Don’t let the whole “loved by NPR” hype…
I’ve had a bit of a hard time with the music that’s been coming out of Scandinavia (primarily Sweden, actually) for the past year or so. Whether it’s Jens Lekman, Sondre Lerche, Frida Hyvonen…
One of the coolest things about being an observer of the local H-town scene, at least for me, is getting to watch a lot of hometown folks evolve. The band process here works the same…
On his second solo release, Where Have You Been, Cleveland, Ohio-based Mike Uva doesn’t stray too far from bands like The Go-Betweens and singer/songwriters…
