How intoxicating is a singer who, from the moment she opens her mouth, can soothe rattled nerves with just the smooth, sweet and self-assured tone of her voice? Voices like that are a rare breed – Norah Jones has one, as do Kelli Dayton, Shara Nelson and Joss...
If anything can be taken as true about Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton given his operating procedures over the last twenty-four months, it is that he seems to deliberately try to force musicians out of their comfort zones as soon as he sits down in the...
When Airborne appeared out of the wilds of Australia with some amped up blues riffs and a campy bad attitude three years ago, listeners were perfectly aware of what they might be witnessing: it was like time had wrinkled a little and delivered another AC/DC before the...
Ya know? I didn't notice before how many songs bands are just giving away for free before I started putting this column together. All the world's a goddamn candyland for this stuff so I thought I'd load another installment in the chamber. So who wants more...
The reason that pop punk has always found a receptive audience is really, really simple: every generation wants to think it is nothing like the previous one. They need to believe that they're writing an all-new book; that no one has ever dealt with what they're...
If one glances into the “Whatever Happened To?” file locked up in the vaults of Canadian rock, you'll notice there were many great bands in the Nineties but an incredible number of players that jumped ship from those bands at some point. Some of those...
When Jimi Hendrix was at the top of his game between 1967 and 1970, the mark he left upon rock n' roll was indelible and arguably changed the face and form of the genre forever. In just three years, he made three lauded albums (four if one includes the live...
Rock history is littered with the stories of bands that worked tirelessly to break through only to enjoy diminished returns at best. It is, by all accounts, wildly frustrating; a band can try endlessly to find just the right combination of factors to strike gold, yet...
When one reaches the point where it has been forty years after an artist has passed on, it feels awkward to imply that their story is continuing to deepen, but the body of work that Jimi Hendrix left behind is an extraordinary case. Since Hendrix' passing in 1970,...
Long before "performance art" was even a twinkle in the eyes of James Franco or Joaquin Phoenix, Andrew W. K. was showing up to interviews with blood and vomit on stained t-shirts. Was it all schtick? Did he take the "Party Hard" lyrics seriously?...