Welcome back ta da land o' da livin' junky! Awright, yer right, I took a week off, sue me. But hey – that jus' means yer dat much hungrier fer some new, fresh, free SWAG now don'it? Good thing I brought a big bag wit' me dis week. Okay,...
While no album that Rob Zombie has released since going solo has really tanked commercially, the hard truth is that it has been a solid ten years since the singer released a good album of new music. That might sound damning, but it's true; lots of Rob Zombie's...
Ever since The Flaming Lips completed the album cycle supporting At War With The Mystics in 2006, the band has seemed intent on moving away from every conventional music structure which might imply a sense of warmth and get as far outside of common pop conventions as...
The last few years have been surprisingly uncertain ones for Billy Bragg. After the singer finished his contract with Elektra in 2002 with England, Half English, he chose to seek his fortunes elsewhere and landed briefly on ANTI- Records. While 2008's Mr. Love...
The beauty of Shotgun Jimmie's music has always been the perfect purity of its heart. Since first appearing before listeners with a group called Shotgun & Jaybird in 2003, “Shotgun” Jimmie Kilpatrick has embodied a charmed (and charming) musical...
It's so nice to have Mudhoney back. With some alt-rock and grunge bands trying to “change with the times” and alienating a lot of older fans with that ambition (see Jane's Addiction, Alice In Chains and The Melvins) and others trying to act like...
By 1995, the alt-rock scene in Seattle was already well on its wat to falling apart from exposure and the evils associated with it. By then, Kurt Cobain was dead, in-fighting, substance abuse and a general sense of dissatisfaction had started to dissolve Soundgarden...
At sixty-eight years old, Eric Clapton is admitting he's an old man. That's the message I get from Old Sock, his latest studio release. As I listen to it, I picture Clapton in a rocking chair on the porch (probably in some sunny clime, like the cover photo),...
If ever a record embodied the possibility of a new wave of dream-pop music manifesting somewhere in the music spectrum, it would be on Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO – The Besnard Lakes' fourth album. In listening, those who experience the record will...
Let's hear a cheer for being playfully malign! The Stranglers had been basically out of commission for the better part of a decade (sure – they could still pull a crowd, but they were losing creative steam quickly after issuing their Coup De Grace in 1998) or...