Seldom is a band able to venture into undiscovered countries or sound completely unique within the rock idiom anymore. Part of that has to do with the availability and user-friendliness of recording software; digital recording platforms have become so easy to use now...
Okay, before everyone takes it upon themselves to jump on Freak Out! and tear a strip out of it for the same reason critics have been lambasting Teenage Bottlerocket since the band released its second album in 2005 (a chorus of “It sounds the same as their other...
Maybe it's because Elk is coming out of a scene which has numbered hardcore punk (A Day And A Deathwish, In These Walls, Ceremonial Snips, Attack In Black, Alexisonfire and more) and folkish country (Attack In Black again, City and Colour) as its greatest musical...
I'll concede that this review is a bit late in coming (the better part of two months behind release, in fact), but there were outside factors which kept me from getting to Marvelous Clouds right away. I was shocked when I heard that Aaron Freeman was quitting Ween...
The Pumpkins have always been an acquired taste. They were a Nineties band that weren’t necessarily a Nineties band. Their unique brand of Goth influenced, over-produced stadium rock stood apart from the successes of the rest of the grungy garage bands of the...
One day, back in the summer of 2010, I found myself strolling through the streets of Midtown Sacramento, taking part in a monthly affair known as the Second Saturday Art Walk. Paintings, sculptures, wine… not necessarily a high class affair, but an affair...
If one were to only study the mountain of tattered and yellowing newsprint which has buil up around the Seattle rock scene of the Nineties over the last twenty years, it would be very easy to assume that the scene was an enormous sausage factory. Everyone can instantly...
While he doesn’t want to admit it for fear of jinxing the whole thing and watching it go down the tubes, singer/guitarist Jesse Elliott knows that something is about to happen to his band, These United States. He doesn’t know what, but anyone who speaks...
While he doesn't want to admit it for fear of jinxing the whole thing and watching it go down the tubes, singer/guitarist Jesse Elliott knows that something is about to happen to his band, These United States. He doesn't know what, but anyone who speaks with...
After an illuminating and enlightening reissue endeavor undertaken in 2010 which saw The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion get heavy again in their re-examinations of albums like Now I Got Worry, Orange, Acme and Extra Width, the band has elected to go in the polar opposite...