The ’80s post-punk revival is getting a little out of hand. When bands like Interpol and Franz Ferdinand came out, it was a breath of fresh air because most modern rock fans hadn’t listened to Joy Division in a while, much less heard of Gang of Four…
I know what you’re thinking. Honest, I do: four young, greasy-haired Toronto guys who look like they moonlight as clerks at Old Navy, a band where everybody but the drummer sings, vast promises of crunchy guitars and melodies (all at the same time! whoa!)…
For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past decade-plus, Thom Yorke is Radiohead’s weirdo frontman, and not too surprisingly, his first solo work, The Eraser, sounds like, well…Radiohead…
Blues Guitar Women, as you might imagine from the title, is a collection of songs all performed by female guitar players and compiled by a fellow female guitarista, Sue Foley. Now, I don’t know if it’s just me, but blues tends to break down into extremes…
A bit of a grower, actually. On a first listen, Slacks’ Terrestrial sounded like pretty generic Neil Young-circa-“Down By The River”-inspired instrumentals (with a couple of vocal tracks popping up — interesting formal gambit, that, being a mostly instrumental band with a couple vocal songs)…
Holy fucking shit, this is bizarre. I’m sitting here listening to what sounds like mid-century swing-jazz as interpreted by a band made up of Koopas and little mustachioed Italian guys…
Take a dash of the Beach Boys, the warmth of a sunset, a sprinkle of Velvet Underground, and a slab of the Beatles, and you might have something close to Kelley Stoltz’s ambitious sophomore effort, Below the Branches…
Okay, I’m a bit less panicked now. When I first threw Without Feathers, the sophomore effort from Montreal-dwelling indie-rockers the Stills into the CD player, I had this horrible feeling that the Alzheimer’s had finally begun to kick in…
Not without potential, I suppose, but in my book the whole sparse wispy female vocals over even sparser music needs some je ne sais quoi to lift it, and The Way to Bitter Lake just has a whole lot of quoi: almost comically repetitive minimal riffs…
On Monday, August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. The ensuing natural disaster, combined with yet another demonstration by the Bush Administration of its massive incompetence (and criminally negligent attitude toward those deemed electorally unnecessary)…
I can’t get over this CD. Oh! Calcutta! is the latest creation from Brendan, Chris, and Neil of The Lawrence Arms. You might remember them from such underground punk acts as The Broadways and Slapstick…
The Goldstars are a garage-rock group from Chicago that plays music that’s pretty much straight out of the ’60s — there’s little here that would be out of place on Nuggets. The band’s a supergroup (a Chicago one, anyway), to boot, that includes Skipper…
Ex-Boyfriends play standard loud, tight post-punk music. The band is a power trio, with everyone contributing vocals, and the songs on this record, Dear John, deal with gay-specific topics as well as more general subjects…
The bio says Mary Timony’s an influence, and that’s fair enough, but what about Cat Power? I wonder whether the publicists left that name off the list because it would have been too easy, too obvious…
On first listen, the four San Clemente guys in Bril (vocalist/guitarist Dave Starr, guitarist/etc. Kris Winrich, bassist/percussionist Scott Nelson, and drummer Kelly Winrich) make me want to shake my head and consign them to the mental dustbin…
The Boils and the Runs, and it’s only my first day — oi! Two punk rock CDs could not be much more different than The Boils’ From the Bleachers and The Runs’ Wet Sounds. The two CDs reflect the opposing poles of strong ethos and pathos…
I was prepared to give Best of Active Days a reasonably positive review after an initial, inattentive listen. There’re some nice chunky-sounding bits in the first song that brought the Fall to mind, and other bits here and there that reminded me of the early-’90s…
Jazz music — these days, if you don’t like it, you at least know about it. It exists today in various forms, of course, including “light,” “modern,” and “electronic”… yes, that’s right, “electronic”…
If I had to sit down and come up with the single biggest shift in the music industry over the past decade or so, it wouldn’t be the portable MP3 player, online filesharing, MySpace, podcasting, or any of the other real visible technological/cultural jumps…
Sometimes the hype works, even if it’s not necessarily the way it was meant to. I’d heard so damn much about the Subways’ debut, Young For Eternity, before I ever actually heard it that realistically…
“FUCK CORPORATE FAKERS. SUPPORT TRUE INDIE MUSIC.” So blasts the slogan on the press materials of Mexico City quartet Sub-Division. “Watch for the crazy kids of Sub-Division as they make their way up the CMJ charts…
I’m finding lately that I’ve got a tendency to want to dismiss the little two-song demos/samplers that occasionally appear here on my desk. “What’s the point?” I’ll catch myself asking. “Fuck, I can’t be bothered to listen to this…”
In a society where crunk is the style of a song and American Idols reign supreme, one can’t help but wonder how far rock needs to progress in order to maintain its relevance. For those who’ve been keeping score, the game’s not going well…
Before I start this review I just want to get some things out of the way. I chose this album because I was sure it was going to be awful. First of all, there was an unnecessary umlaut in the name. This fact alone would have been enough to make fun of…
Unfortunately, I feel like we’re kind of behind the ball on this one, and I guess in a way we are, because My Morning Jacket has blown up a bit since we got these discs. These days, you can pick up any issue of whatever “alternative” rock mag…
With Yer Living Grave, these workaholic New York punks deliver their fifth release in less than as many years, a pace of recording matched by very few other contemporary artists besides Deerhoof…
Mysterious Waves is an album by Blackloud, which is a one-man recording project by (you guessed it) James Blackloud. The record’s a mixture of drum machines and psychedelia with a whimsical feel, similar to old Flaming Lips. It’s mostly danceable…
This is the Long Beach sound. Not afraid to mix up genres, styles, tempos, concepts, while maintaining an identifiable “sound” all their own? Bargain Music are a fun trio with good guest musicians and well-produced, mixed tunes that beg comparisons…
Band of Horses’ debut Sub Pop release, Everything All the Time, is nothing short of beautiful. Since the only thing I knew of the band before this (outside of their label and that members Ben Bridwell and Matt Brooke were also in semi-shoegazer band Carissa’s Weird) was they toured with…
Little Mountain is the band name for Josh Deeters, who does the typical singer-songwriter thing on Wolves for Winter. The four songs are mostly solo with occasional minimal accompaniment, but the focus is on the guitar and the songs (although Deeters gets in the way on occasion)…
The January Taxi sounds to me like the missing link between Jawbreaker and Jets To Brazil — or, more appropriately, a cross between Dear You and Four-Cornered Night, perhaps with a hint of Spanaway for epic guitar-ness…
The Get Hustle’s promo sheet claims that the band has “consistently made albums that amaze.” For once, a publicist’s overblown claims might not have been hyperbole, but for the substitution of one word: though the Get Hustle’s music, as on Rollin’ in the Ruins, is certainly remarkable…
Have no fear: in spite of the nautical-sounding title, The Essex Green’s latest release, Cannibal Sea, comes nowhere near the piratical obsessions of, say, The Decemberists or The Coral. The press materials try to paint Cannibal Sea as some kind of chronicle…
Music reviews tend to be of two types. The first is the type where the reviewer tells you how Artist A sounds like Artist B. The second compares this new material by Artist A with earlier material by Artist A. Both of these review types serve the purpose…
Don Caballero is the 800-pound gorilla in any room where a post-rock prog band is playing. A critic can seat them anywhere he wants, to outmuscle the comparatively awkward drumming of a Sweep the Leg Johnny or a Maserati or to tower over the rhythmic insignificance…
I’m fairly certain that Waits recorded this album, The Rustler, on his 4-track in his apartment. Therefore, you’ve gotta know up front that the production quality on this CD isn’t that great. Regardless, I can’t stop listening to this album…
Based on the novel of the same name, Mike Mills’ cinematic indie hit Thumbsucker tells the story of a teenager who adamantly maintains a habit of sucking his thumb. While other external forces view this as an obstacle that he needs to overcome…
“Ask Me If I Care” starts off the Speeds’ four-song EP with a promising if unoriginal roar: punky but not punk, it’s a high-velocity snarl along the lines of Sahara Hotnights’ “Keep Up The Speed,” full of blaring guitars, a bad attitude and ripped-throat screaming…
On Conditioned by the Laugh Track, Sloppy Meateaters feel like a band that’s trying to rip their way out of their own collective skin. At their core, they’re a Warped Tour-playing pop-punk band that shares the stage with the second-string Blink-182s of the world…
Yep, Mudhoney are still around. I know, I can’t believe it, either. I have to admit that I had really lost track after the band after Tomorrow Hit Today, and I’d assumed that they had gone their separate ways long ago. Boy, is there egg on my face…
