On their first album in twenty years, Devo doesn't do anything new, but they do their 'same old' thing better than they have in an even longer time. As they say in “What We Do,” “What we do is what we do/ It's all the same, there's...
In every big pop music trend that has appeared over the last fifty years, there have always been a couple of bands who – as deserving as they might have been – just didn't break as big as everyone inside the scene thought they would. Such was exactly...
At a certain point in a band's career, fans cease to expect any significant growth from them. Why? Eventually, the general assumption the public makes is that the band in question has achieved all the goals it set for itself and/or overcome all the boundaries the...
So, what's a trend-fitting band to do when their trend finally exhausts itself? Does it just curl up its' toes and fade away? Well, sometimes that does happen, but occasionally some of those bands soldier on and even produce something worth hearing. Did anyone...
Poets working in the rock n' roll idiom are a funny breed. Think about it – more often than not, poetry is an intensely personal art form; a form of expression so personal that if someone other than the author is able to truly understand it, it's because...
Often when new recording hardware is released on the public, the ideas that many of the items represent are great in theory but limited because some key applications just aren't possible yet. Such was certainly the case with handheld digital recorders for years;...
Some records are possessed of an intangible quality that makes listeners feel like they've come home – there's a comfortable and lived-in feeling that has a warm glow to it. The reigning masters of creating this sort of atmosphere is Soul Asylum –...
Alright there youse, Happy early Independence Day to all my guys in Sing Sing and Happy Canada Day to all my pals coolin' their heels in Kingston, north o' the border – let's plan a party for when you get out; we'll set somethin' up...
Records: The Action Suits’ Cancer Father seven-inch (1996) on clear teal, Jets to Brazil’s Perfecting Loneliness (2002) on clear orange, and Prince’s Sign 'O’ the Times (1987) on black. Place of Purchase: Cancer Father was purchased from...
With their fifth studio release, The Five Ghosts, Canadian band Stars align themselves once again with familiar themes and dark hooks to the band's previous efforts. The band's first full-length album since 2007's In Our Bedroom After the War, Ghosts...