The day that Nathan Rateliff's In Memory Of Loss showed up on my doorstep, it was with several other packages of albums. It looked innocuous enough, so I didn't pay if much attention; I had other things to do, so it sat for a brief period in my stacks, untouched. One night after I'd already gone through a number of other titles, I took a minute, stopped and relaxed. I didn't intend to review any more CDs that night. Then...

As much as many people outside of the music business don't really understand how it works, there are moments when events can even come as a surprise to those on the inside too. Part of that may have to do with geography; every fan knows when a record is due to come out at their local record store (or on iTunes), and knows when their favorite band is playing through their town right? After the record in question comes out,...

In every young band's career, the honeymoon period between label and group after the first contract signing is always an important one. After the signature dries on the dotted line, there is tremendous excitement; the band is getting their dream shot and will do the best they can to adhere to the instruction of the far more seasoned veterans both at the label's office and, while they're in the studio, the record producers with whom they work. Things tend to...

It's a very exciting time in the Country French camp. Of late, the band has been working hard wrapping up the sessions for and putting all of the associated bows and ribbons on a new release, entitled Awake You Sleepers!, the band's first full-length album for Murderecords. Judging by Currie's description of the album, the band has cooked up an ambitious experience for fans as, with the assistance of an army of strings and horns, the Country French has created...

It certainly took the rest of the world long enough to catch on to what many punk rockers already knew: Gogol Bordello is one of the best new (if one can call going strong for eleven years 'new') bands on the circuit right now. Punk rockers (lots of 'em – if not all of 'em) have known this since Gypsy Punks: Underground World Strike! hit like a dead-blow hammer in 2006 and, in so doing, suddenly made it okay to...

There's no way to look at Hole or Courtney Love in the present tense without looking at the history, if only because it is now so indelibly etched into pop culture. Of course, there has been the ongoing conjecture and quibbling over the state of Nirvana (or lack thereof), and all of the in-fighting around Kurt Cobain's legacy but, even after that should have faded, Love has remained a full-time pariah as Hole's productivity has become more sporadic. The rumor...

Whether it's an interest in music, visual art, writing, philosophy, science, mathematics or any other endeavor that may require a young mind to think outside the proverbial box, there will come a point when, after being frustrated by failure after failure, he or she begins to wonder if all the good ideas have indeed already been thought up. The moment when that train of thought rolls in represents a crossroads; either the young mind will take that question as a...

Fucked Up is one of those bands that boggle the mind. I'll never know why they're so under-appreciated, because they’re taking hardcore music to the next level and almost entirely redefining what punk rock sounds like. I’ll also never know why they're being marketed to the indie community, because even though they’ve been able to gain critical acclaim, the scene clearly doesn’t know what to do with them. Alas, I could go on and on with this topic (and I...

Some records just sound like they're going to be huge from the first few measures of the first song on them. Whether it's because there's obviously a breathtaking amount of ambition thrown into the (the Eels' Blinking Lights and Other Revelations is like that, as is Trail Of Dead's Worlds Apart), just the right amount of bracing or authoritative sound or even something as simple as a great big riff or vocal rave-up (as was the case with Hendrix' Are...

Ooohhh, are you guys lucky or what? So this time, I took a couple of days and just fleeced everything that wasn't nailed down around the inter-webs. And I thought to myself, “Self,” I thought, “Here I am sittin' on a mudda-fuckin' mountain of free SWAG from the five points and it's an awful lot. Should I sit on some and parcel it out to my devoted readers every so often and make myself look like a golden boy, just...