Sam Beam has a voice as sweet as iced tea in the summertime and a way with words that breaks hearts like a drunken surgeon, and so his second full-length teems with love songs wherein one of the lovers ends up as “ashes around the yard” and it’s no big…
Sondre Lerche’s songs live in a world with Nick Drake’s pink moons and the Flaming Lips’ pink robots, where maladies have melodies and modern rock is just an ugly rumor. In Lerche’s world, Highway to Heaven reruns are, apparently, still a big deal (check the title track’s shout-out to “Michael…
In the short history since 9-11, there hasn’t been a song that so accurately sums up the feelings of that ambush and its aftermath as Apollo Sunshine’s “Happening” does, and there probably won’t be. “Happening” is a mess of screamed sentiment and squealing synths, the music as ragged and ripped…
I’d already been disappointed by one Saddle Creek spin-off project this year–Desaparecidos guitarist Denver Dalley’s mushy synth-pop disc Statistics–when the Elected’s Sub Pop debut landed in my mailbox. But instead of sucking, Me First, a dreamy little album by Rilo Kiley guitarist Blake Sennett’s loose bunch of Los Angeles space…
If I’d read only one or two of the 847 magazine stories that attempt to illuminate the screamo scene for the parents of junior high kids with pictures of Bert McCracken on their walls, I’d dig it. Screaming, emotions, eccentric front men given to onstage acrobatics more involving than the…
You don’t need to hear Sonic Youth to like them. In fact, the less you hear them, the more likable they probably are. Since the band’s inception in 1981, its New York City, post-punk-rock story has been an inspirational tale: a group of young misfits who defied convention to make…
On January 28, 2003, Craig Minowa was sitting at his drum set when President Bush delivered his State of the Union. Minowa, the brainchild behind the enviro-band Cloud Cult, was coming off an impossibly difficult 12 months. He had lost his 2-year-old son, who died in his sleep the previous…
If Jay-Z and Dame Dash are the Mick and Keef of the Roc-A-Fella fam, then Kanye West is the label’s Charlie Watts, the quiet rock behind the roll. Or he was until now. After The College Dropout, he’ll never be small enough to fit behind the scenes again. And why…
The title is something of an imperative: Lean back, kick off your flip-flops and don’t bogart that joint, my friend. This charming, endlessly listenable debut from the Los Angeles band–spearheaded by writer/producer Chris Colthart, who also sings and plays guitar–is brimming with spaced-out ’60s pop, like the soundtrack to a…
Tunde Adebimpe’s voice wavered in and out when we spoke last week, but cellular phones weren’t entirely to blame. The lead singer for Brooklyn’s TV on the Radio took our phone interview to-go, so between questions about the band’s debut album, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, I had to compete…
The Secret Machines aren’t the only Texas-to-New York success story awaiting clubgoers this week: Nerdy, Brooklyn-based Ivy League melodists Bishop Allen, whose lead singer, Justin Rice, is a Dallas native, hit the Barley House on Monday night in support of their thoroughly peppy self-released debut, Charm School. I’m on the…
Trying to describe the sound of The Cooper Temple Clause is like trying to corral a 7-year-old who just ate an entire bag of Halloween candy. Oasis kidnapped by Nine Inch Nails and forced to sing karaoke to ear-shattering industrial tunes? The lovechild of Kurt Cobain and Placebo tinkering with…
Describing Trans Am without falling back on journalistic cliché is a tricky thing. For almost a decade, the D.C. trio has been many things: an inspired hybrid of electronics and rock, satirists of style (particularly of the 1980s) and sly genre grave robbers. Oh, screw it. Their debut is “electro-prog,”…
After another two years of radio domination and pop-culture omnipresence by Neptunes Inc., Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo (and their curiously fair-weather rapper friend Shay) have returned to the skate park of your mind with Fly or Die, the second offering from their generally rock-oriented side project N.E.R.D. Like In…
Pete Thomas sent out an e-mail last Friday with the subject header “Saying goodbye is never easy to do.” The e-mail–short, sweet, self-deprecating–announced the breakup of Thomas’ band of seven years, Slow Roosevelt. I received the e-mail that afternoon, forwarded by a fan, whose one-word commentary seemed to say it…
One Thursday, not too long ago, I called Fat Ted’s. “Is Nikki McKibben playing tonight?” “Yeah, at 9 p.m. Wait–didn’t you call last week?” Busted. In fact, this was the third week I’d called Fat Ted’s, hoping to catch the former American Idol star and single mother who finished an…
There was a day when fame meant hoofing it in some big-budget musical or, maybe, a spot on Solid Gold. In these complicated times of bloggers and Real World celebrities, however, success is a far trickier beast. How do you know when you’re famous? Is it when your sex tape…
Colin Meloy was not a normal boy. He loved books more than just about anything–Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Piers Anthony–and had a rather unsettling fascination with axe murderers. At the age of 7, he wrote, directed and starred in his own play, “The Bloody Knight,” which he describes as “basically…
If you’re one of the dozen or so people who saw Laurel Canyon, you may have noticed some familiar faces from the indie rock scene. In the 2002 film, star Frances McDormand plays a sexy, middle-aged record producer who takes a much younger lover–the lead singer of an English rock…
So good it’s, ahem, illegal: The Beatles’ White Album meets Jay-Z’s The Black Album on the way to the courthouse, where EMI’s lawyers lie in wait with cease-and-desist orders to protect copyright holders who want to fuck up what a bedroom DJ funked up on a Christmas Eve lark. The…
What the hell was he gonna do after Broke Down? Seriously. Slaid Cleaves has been touring for three years on the strength of his first album–a singer/songwriter effort beloved by critics and fans. And just what was so special about Broke Down? Dark, sad and sometimes uncomfortable stories matched with…
When I interviewed Modest Mouse front man Isaac Brock before the release of 2000’s The Moon & Antarctica– the band’s major-label debut after a handful of indie releases that cultivated a very devoted following–I’m pretty sure I got stoned via secondhand smoke. We were hiding out from rabid fans in…
