What's in a name? As fashionable as it might be to say that such qualifying measures are meaningless or useless when it comes to the arts, musicians live and die with generic names and their perceived status in pop culture. Think about it – how many new buzz...
When A Perfect Circle announced that they would be playing three nights in San Francisco, and playing a different album in it's entirety each night, I was a bit torn as to what show I wanted to attend. In the end I chose the third and final night, where the band...
Alright junky, si'down a minute an' listen up, So I thought I was doin' good by ya. I thought, y'know, thirty new bits o' liberated music a week? That ain't bad right? 'At's what I thought, an' prolly whatchu thought. It was a good...
Trying to measure the influence of The Lowest Of The Low and their debut album, Shakespeare My Butt, on modern rock is impossible. That isn't any kind of overstatement – when the album dropped in 1991, an entire generation of Canadians (and those Americans...
Over the years, Screeching Weasel has built a deserved reputation as one of the truly great skate punk bands of the Eighties and Nineties. Since first blasting out of Chicago in 1986, SW has hammered flat, honed and perfected their sound to the joy of their devout and...
How does one adequately express when a new album sounds good without actually sounding new? It's not that the songs are re-recordings of old material done to reflect the changes a band has undergone over time, just that the album sounds incredibly derivative of...
When I first heard about this album, it sounded like an odd pairing – a pop superstar and an old-time rocker whose brief moment of glory had come and gone nearly forty years ago. But once I heard the history behind it, the collaboration made much more sense....
Hey junky,How're ya keepin'? Have ya got the shakes yet or what? Don'chu worry, doctor Donnie's here to cure what ails ya witta great big bag o' new tunes. An' I got some doozies for ya this week too — I tracked down some o' the new...
As early as 1982's Imperial Bedroom, Elvis Costello demonstrated that he was more than just an angry young man with a talent for hooks and clever wordplay. He was one of pop's great songwriters; able to conquer a wide variety of styles and emotions. Throughout...
Four years ago, Damon “Badly Drawn Boy” Gough hit the wall. After the tepid reception for his fifth album, Born In The U.K., failed to live up to the singer's own critical expectation, he began to slow down dramatically as he battled depression and...