Let it never be said that hard work doesn't eventually get rewarded. For the last eighteen years, Israeli punks Useless ID have released albums and toured at a tireless rate and built a devoted fanbase (among which Jello Biafra numbers himself) which each...
While it's true that rock history sports no shortage of great but widely overlooked or underrated bands (the 1980s proved to be full of them), sometimes it's just impossible to decide how it could have happened – what averted the public's attention so...
After so many years of Van Halen actively holding the possibility of a reunion with David Lee Roth in front of fans like a carrot only to pull it away when it looked like they might get excited, can anyone blame those spurned supporters for not wanting to play along...
Awright Junky, Yeahyeahyeah, I know whatcher thinkin'. My bag o' SWAG is a little lighta dis week right? Yeah, I heardja, but ya know what? What I missed out in quantity, I made up for in quality – le's get inta da SWAG Report. Once agin dis week, I...
Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment, has entered into a historic new record deal with American legend and innovator Willie Nelson. The deal marks a label homecoming for Nelson, who, from 1975-1993, cut a phenomenal string of top-selling...
It’s difficult to judge Lana Del Rey’s record without addressing the media hype that has surrounded her for the past six months. If you haven't heard, just type her name into Google; you’ll find blogger backlash about her image change, a highly...
If there’s a canon of musicians who craft music driven by experimentations in sound – Dirty Projectors, Animal Collective, Tune-Yards – it would only make sense to add Gotye to that list. Gotye (pronounced “gore-ti-yeah,” or...
It has never been analyzed too deeply before, but the fact is that all of the great collaborative rock bands and albums start out as loose, fun affairs which only become serious later – after the players who came together to contribute to the project discovered...
As has been the case every other time Leonard Cohen has released a new album since 1969, the first question which really begs asking when one examines Old Ideas is how much rhetoric inspired it, how much rhetoric was required to produce it, how much wry wit has been...
Now about eighteen years after bands like Green Day, NOFX and Rancid broke through into the mainstream, punk rock has changed in some most peculiar ways. After the great renaissance happened in 1994, it didn't take long for other young, hopeful bands to formalize...