I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was starting my morning shift at KTRU one bright Wednesday in 1994, sifting through the piles of CDs looking for something to play — let’s see…Codeine, A-Bones, Liz Phair (yecch), Charles Gayle…Green Day. Green Day?…
There are only a few singers out there who possess voices that literally make me want to break down and cry; most, oddly, are guys, people like Mark Kozelek, Nick Drake, Eric Bachman, Tom Waits, or Will Sheff, who sound either so far gone or so deranged…
Well, well — it’s another dance/punk almost-but-not-quite electroclash band that’s made it big. How big? O.C. big, which means everyone will be listening to their hot-on-the-heels of Bloc Party dance floor-swagger rock. Some tracks on their self titled debut…
So, what do you do when everybody around you suddenly seems to be doing the same thing you’ve been working at for the past few years? You stop and change directions. It can be one of the axioms for success, and one that Statistics frontman Denver Dalley…
The Pasadena goofballs formerly known as the Slurpees, forced to change their name by 7-11, continue to expand their no-longer-conventional definition of punk, creating for this EP, Strands and Drools, some kind of weird cross between mutant prog, post-rock…
The Skintones are a punk rock trio from Madison, WI, and they’ve filled this album, Never Get Better, with politically-charged songs and traditional punk rock clichés. They keep the number of chords on most of their songs to a minimum, but there are some impressive basslines…
For a few tracks, the home-brewed nerd-pop of Jerry Fels’s one-man band the Short Happy Life (a name also used by a completely different band about five years ago) has a certain offhand charm, especially on songs like the lo-fi synth-pop of “What The Body Wants”…
In the liner notes to Incesticide, St. Kurt of Aberdeen, in his quest for ever more refined mortification to maintain his state of rock-star holiness, wrote the following comment (one assumes he intended it to be self-lacerating), “I’ll be the first to admit that we’re…”
Four Canadians deliver average pop-rock on this EP. Vocalist Chris Frey is the most interesting thing about this record, being both a former member of better band Destroyer and the focal point of the music itself. His vocals are of the Ian Curtis variety…
With pop savants like Jon Brion, Jason Falkner and even Nickel Creek’s Chris Thile making sure to do everything themselves, a performer like Jim Boggia comes off as a phenomenal slacker, contributing nothing but vocals (a cross between Richard X. Heyman and the Gin Blossoms’ Robin Wilson)…
This is a different direction for the Seximals. Whereas their previous album, My Old Problems, was a collection of lo-fi rock songs, Always Pithy After Repose is a collection of sample-based pieces with samples culled from some of the Seximals’ favorite recordings…
Electronic, synth-heavy beats coupled with lyrics that bleed emotion — perfect for disaffected youth and trend-weary scenesters. The Bell Curve’s self-titled album is everything that early ’90s indie was built on and blends the slow drone of British shoegazer bands…
While it’s tough to get a really good impression of a band from only two songs, this split EP does its best to let listeners in on some of North Texas’ best-kept secrets. Bangarang, who contribute “Closet Organ” (sample lyric: “I’ve got this closet organ / When I threw away my monsters”)…
In an interview a few years back with Jamie Stewart, the creative force behind Xiu Xiu, the interviewer pointed out to Stewart that whenever people heard Xiu Xiu’s music, a typical reaction was often “Is this a joke?” Stewart’s response was to chuckle…
What the hell? Okay, let’s try to think this through: Huntington Beach rockers Avenged Sevenfold look like a bunch of Goth-punks, sing the most beautiful harmonies you’re likely to hear anytime lately (including on those treasured emo albums you hide from your too-cool friends)…
xbxrx plays hardcore punk stuff crossed with some no-wave guitars, with lots of hardcore tempos and hyperactivity. The band likes to write lots of odd breaks into their songs, and the vocals range from shouting to screaming (from which they still wring a fair amount of variety)…
Well, folks, it looks like epic arena rock is back, and thank God for that. I was starting to get worried that Coldplay, who pretty much single-handedly made grand, Floydian, not-too-rough rock cool once again, were a fluke, but thankfully, here comes fellow Brits…
Sean’s an instrumental duo made up of a keyboardist and a drummer — the keyboardist plays through a guitar amplifier and effects, getting a sound that’s closer to a guitar, or at least not always like a keyboard. They get a decent range of sounds out of the keyboards…
Don’t fret, people of Canada. I know you’re probably getting kind of nervous about all the attention currently focused on your fair country by your less-well-behaved neighbors to the South, but I’m here to tell you that you really don’t need to worry. I know, I know…
With a quartet of slow, loud, thick, and very long pieces, Asva sets the listener adrift in a sea of undifferentiated time. And yet, if Isis, in their own opinion, evokes the ocean, with a sense of massive, inexorable, inhuman power…
Brandon Wiard’s a man who doesn’t know what he wants to be. Sardonic alternativiste? Expansive art-rocker? Evan Dando-esque sensitive pretty boy? Wiard dips his wick into all of them on Painting A Burning Building, but he’s most likely to end up the latter, thanks in part to a voice…
This Houston band’s three-song EP teems with with understated vocals, breakbeats, and airy synths, music that defies genres and comes across as completely original — something almost unheard of these days. The band claims they “deliver lyrics with swaggering literate wit…”
I’ve started playing this game where I try to guess whether a band is together because its members all shared some sort of common musical vision or because playing with other people is fun, so why not? System Of A Down, for instance, I’d place in the former category, while Audioslave clearly fits the latter…
On the press release for the Mystechs, it says they attempted to create an “opera about an unfortunate teenage soul who can no longer distinguish Dungeons and Dragons from reality” on Warriors & Warlocks. Hmm…
The title is really gonna say a lot, here. At first, I thought Tabitha Monet was signed and had a million dollars’ worth of studio time behind this record. And yeah, I was still planning to say that it was recorded very well. Beyond that, the packaging looks…
Wan Santo Condo’s self-titled album basically sounds like mainstream, radio-friendly rock. My indie sensibilities push this band to the back of my psyche like an index finger pushing to the back of a bulemic’s mouth. I’m not trying to berate the band…
It’s pretty refreshing to hear a reggae artists like Mishka, particularly if you, like me, have been bombarded with not much of the genre beyond gun-happy dancehall toasting in recent memory — because let’s face it, most of that’s about as interesting as the glut of gangsta rap spawned…
Music like this restores my faith in indie-rock — DIY rock with interesting vocals and straight-ahead, simple songs. On songs like “To Be Down,” “BeKind,” and “Options,” New York City’s Mercury Stars mix their New Wave-meets-post-rock stylings…
Rufio are yet another punk-rock band from California — that is, they sound more like hard-rock to me, but they probably think of themselves as a punk band. They engage us in the age-old debate revolving around technical ability vs. inspiration. Is a technically gifted voice more important…
Oh, good grief. Where do I start? Okay, well, this is a three-piece outfit from Austin (one demerit there) led by a guy named Steve Tobin (guitarist, singer) along with a thudding (and now departed from the band) rhythm section. The liner notes and material on the band/Tobin’s website…
The Mechanical Boy truly threw me for a loop. I had no idea that Richmond, TX, was the musical place to be, but apparently it is. Musically, I totally hear Audioslave and the like in this band. I have mentioned countless times before that, in my book, metal blows chunks…
Okay, I’ll admit that it’s a little weird listening to the Redwalls’ most recent full-length, De Nova. I still can’t entirely get used to bands that do that whole “retro” thing, seemingly aping the past from the tone settings on their amps all the way to the ragged mops…
There’re only a handful of ways a band can go, really, in terms of musical progression. It’s an axiom of the music business that second albums are a bitch and third albums are even worse, and there’s a good reason for that — unless you’re phenomenally lucky…
Epigene’s latest album, Popular Dissent, is probably the most professionally produced CD I’ve had to review. Everything about this CD reeks of “Major Label” quality — the artwork is tasteful and original, the packaging is adequate, the liner notes are readable…
It sounds like the members of Endgames have reasonably cool taste in music, but all that means for Daybreak To Sunset is that the songs are interesting, when they manage to be interesting at all, only to the extent that they remind you of songs you like better…
Once, not that long ago, there was a time when women in the music world could be something other than rumpshakin’ hip-hop queens, utterly bland teen pop stars, or vapid “divas.” There was a time when it was okay for women to really, truly sing…
First off, a tidbit of information that may be useful to the reader: Kristi Rae is indeed female; it isn’t some clever name for an all-male band or anything. So all of you folks out there that are now rolling your eyes and thinking “OMG, not another chick band” to yourselves…
Bands that are able to meld their influences into a new sound are the ones that strike me as the most influential. In this case, Quiet Life’s “No Worries” mixes Neil Young-style harmonica and guitar with an almost jam-like beat to create a modern-sounding song that stands out…
When your album cover is a photocopy play on The Clash’s London Calling, you’ve got nowhere to go but up. Very appropriately titled, the album is more like listening to a friend’s band practice than an actual release, but the DIY production and wide array of styles…
Full Scale’s self-titled debut is decidedly a metal album for the clichéd mind. The cover art, for one thing, is jet black with Army helicopters on the back and a CD label meant to represent a bullet hole. Musically, this band reminds me of a cross between Biohazard…
