Dusting ‘Em Off: Led Zeppelin IV
Staff writers Katherine Flynn and Julian Ring work through their love of Led Zeppelin’s self-titled fourth album below, attempting to place it in the larger context of the band’s discography while...
View ArticleAlbum Review: The Fresh & Onlys – House of Spirits
The hero’s journey, according to author John Green, is the journey from strength to weakness. Descending from affluence into poverty, from premier social stature to none, and rising back out with...
View ArticleLive Review: Guided by Voices at San Francisco’s Regency Ballroom (6/11)
Photography by Ted Maider Robert Pollard is the most effective kind of frontman — one who espouses an entirely different set of values depending on the place and time. Here’s a guy who, on the one...
View ArticleAlbum Review: Brian Eno and Karl Hyde – High Life
There are certain albums that much of the listening populace has written off — Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, for one, plus a few ’70s goofs from Gregg Allman, Elvis, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer....
View ArticleAlbum Review: The Mother Hips – Chronicle Man
One of Rick Rubin’s biggest mistakes, aside from forswearing the razor, was dropping The Mother Hips. The California band’s Pacific boogie rock was just beginning to take flight on 1995’s Part-Timer...
View ArticleTop 10 Merge Records Releases
Starting today, Merge Records will celebrate its 25th anniversary with the four-day festival down in Carrboro, NC. Personally, I’m kicking myself for not saving up enough loot to attend because not...
View ArticleAlbum Review: Harvey Danger – Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? [Reissue]
One of the first things you’ll notice about this reissue is the new artwork. There sits the clapboard house, still colorized like a woodcut stained with Cheeto dust, still placed front and center. It’s...
View ArticleAlbum Review: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Hypnotic Eye
The best moment of Hypnotic Eye is one of its most subdued: track six, “Power Drunk”, about two and a half minutes in. Lead guitarist Mike Campbell has just spun out another set of whisper-wail licks...
View ArticleHarvey Danger’s Sean Nelson: The Well-Appointed Ghetto
Sean Nelson still hasn’t made his peace with “Flagpole Sitta”. You’d think, at 41, he’d have gotten some closure by now. It’s been nearly two decades, after all — an eternity in rock years — since the...
View ArticleAlbum Review: Bishop Allen – Lights Out
You may have been following the elitist fight currently underway between William Deresiewicz, an Ivy League-educated writer, and a handful of journalists from Newsweek and The New York Times. The topic...
View ArticleAlbum Review: Interpol – El Pintor
There are those who believe that when it comes to Interpol, nothing — not even a brutal, lionized smash — will top Turn on the Bright Lights. Can you really blame them? That debut had everything to...
View ArticleInterpol’s 10 Best Songs
This article originally ran in 2014; we’re dusting it off in honor of Paul Banks’ birthday on May 3rd. No one from the New York indie underground showed up as well-dressed as Interpol did in 2002, but...
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