Introduction
Yes, friends, here we are yet again. No, the e-zine's not dead, nor have I moved to Latvia with the stacks and stacks of CDs people faithfully send us every month. We're still here, although we're definitely slow-moving (damn, has it been just about a year already?). We've finally broken the five-issue mark (in an, uh, inordinately long period of time, releasing just about an issue a year) and are working to streamline/professionalize things somewhat... [more]

No Labels: Don't Call Okkervil River "Country"
It's a dilemma almost every band has to face at some point: what do you do if every reviewer in the universe says you're one thing, and you think you're something else entirely? If you're Will Robinson Sheff, Austin-area musician and songwriter of the bands Okkervil River and Shearwater, you just have to shrug and move on... [more]

Pan Global Cocktail Pop Superstars: Ivy Face the Fear and the Desperation
If you've got more than a commercial-length knowledge of what Gwyneth Paltrow would look like with Homer Simpson proportions, then you've heard Ivy. Handpicked by the Farrelly brothers to score Shallow Hal in its entirety, the New York band have spent nearly a decade making pop music that despite its modern flourishes isn't too far removed from Motown's "What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted" era and Burt Bacharach's mid-to-late '60s golden age: gorgeous, almost fatalistically sad tunes with dense but never oppressive arrangements that function as a form of protection from the pain and loneliness of the outside world... [more]

Deerhoof -- Laying Down New Tracks
Although I can't claim to be a perfectly objective observer, as far as I'm concerned Deerhoof are by far the most interesting band currently active in the San Francisco Bay Area indie circuit. They combine delicious pop melodies with an avant-garde sense of rhythm and noise. They follow no trends except those of their own making. Their latest album, Apple O', is out now as a joint release of Kill Rock Stars and its sister label 5 Rue Christine. I interviewed Deerhoof drummer extraordinaire Greg Saunier via email (no thanks to Hotmail). This is what he had to say... [more]

The Eight Creeping Tentacles of Death of... The Octopus Project
Some bands are just so bizarre they don't let you look away. I meandered up to Rudyard's a while back to catch a friend's band and watched with a mixture of dread and fascination as this motley quartet called The Octopus Project (the opening band, it turned out) spent a half-hour setting up a cluttered mass of instruments, black boxes, and cables. I feared the worst -- I'd come to see a band I knew and liked, and here I was about to be subjected to some kind of mindless electronic pop...Oh, great, I thought, I wonder when the kids with the low-hanging pants and glowsticks come out?... [more]