 Okkervil River -- Down the River of Golden Dreams
 Will Sheff and his Okkervil River bandmates Jonathan Meiburg, Zach Thomas, and Seth Warren are men out of time. I don't mean to harp once more on the "old-timey" sound or their usage of odd instrumentation (although the title track of their latest release, Down the River of Golden Dreams, does sound eerily like a somber rendition of the barroom piano tunes my Grandpa used to play for the family when I was a kid); what I'm getting at is that these guys sound like nobody else, from this or any other era... [more]
 Annie Lin -- Truck Was Struck
I should probably state up front that I generally shy away from singer-songwriter folk music. I think the reason is that "folk" seems to be less of a genre than a kind of instrumentation -- play weepy love songs on a distorted electric guitar, and you're emo; play weepy love songs on an acoustic guitar, and you're a folksinger (or at least a Jonah Matranga wannabe). Sure, there's the older school of folksongs, like the kind played in backwoods Appalachia or interpreted by people like Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, or even Billy Bragg... [more]
 Fountains of Wayne -- Welcome Interstate Managers
The thing that pisses me off about Fountains of Wayne is that they're so clearly capable of greatness that their continued failure to achieve it seems less like thwarted potential than some sort of perverse death wish on the parts of band leaders Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger. For the first half of Welcome Interstate Managers, they pretty much nail the wry guitar pop that they've been promising since their 1996 self-titled debut before loading up the second half with the same self-congratulatory cleverness that they've been doling out instead... [more]
 Silverstein -- When Broken Is Easily Fixed
How often does a band come along that fuses heavy-riffage and screaming with melodic breaks and emotional singing? Okay, sure, there are a few. Okay, okay...probably dozens. But I ask you, of the multitude of band out there playing music like this, how many do it well? I'm talking about heavy breaks that could stand up to the aural assault of Poison The Well and melodic parts that evoke The Get Up Kids. How many can sound like old Cave-In and new Cave-In...in the same song, no less? I give you Silverstein... [more]
 Rhonda Roberts -- Odds and Ends
The main reason I took on this "reviewer" gig for Space City Rock was because I'd hoped that I would find that rare gem -- something fresh and extraordinary from a real talent. This five-song demo from Rhonda Roberts is it. Rhonda Roberts has one hell of a sexy voice, perhaps the sexiest voice I've ever heard -- you almost have to hear it to believe me. She has an effortless vocal style full of inflection and content that seem to defy her years. Usually when I hear an emotive singer, I'm able to hear the "work" involved; that is to say, you can hear the emotional effect they're trying to instill in the listener through their vocal manipulations. Some are better at this than others... [more]
 Essential Logic -- Fanfare in the Garden: An Essential Logic Collection
Part of the joy and misery of being a punk-loving music nerd who reads too much rock criticism comes not only from knowing about certain artists, songs and albums that you've never heard and might never get a chance to hear but from watching them being used as weapons in ideological battles that their creators almost certainly didn't envision. When Robert Christgau praises LiLiPUT in Grown Up All Wrong, he good-naturedly fires a shot across the bow of his colleague Griel Marcus, for whom Essential Logic occupies the same space in his own punk rock cosmology... [more]
 Dido -- Life For Rent
If Eminem was only ever right about one thing, it was in his justification for using the first verse of "Thank You" as the hook for "Stan," which was simply that Dido is a terrific pop singer. With a voice that comes across as Delores O'Riordan without the screechiness mixed with Sarah McLachlan without the somnambulance, Ms. Armstrong possesses both a power and a subtlety that serves her pet topic of romantic longing extremely well... [more]
 Various Artists -- Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1
I'm as skeptical as anybody when it comes to benefit/cause compilations. I mean, really, what're the chances that buying a CD to save the whales or free Tibet is going to actually do much of anything to help the root problem? Once you take out the store's cut and the label's cut (and in some cases, the cheap-ass artist's cut, too), then yeah, maybe the three bucks left over can rescue a tiny sliver of the vanishing rainforest in Belize, but still. In the grand scheme of thing, it's about as effective as slapping a bumper sticker on your car... [more]
 The Bangles -- Doll Revolution
There comes a moment about halfway through "Stealing Rosemary" when it seems like the Bangles just might pull this sucker off. The second song on Doll Revolution, "Rosemary" is the type of darkly psychedelic pop that characterized the Paisley Underground scene from whence the band sprang two decades ago, and its harmonies and minor-key guitar chords would have fit snugly on the Bangles' self-titled Faulty Products EP... [more]
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