In New York City in the 1970s, a fledgling writer, a bookstore employee and a chronically unemployed street urchin all became inspired by the French Symbolist authors of the nineteenth century that included Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine and Albert Camus and brought...
It has been said that the measure of a musician can be gauged by their versatility. When removed from their established comfort zone, will they still be able to turn in an inspired performance that simultaneously does their reputation justice and still has an element...
There are moments (alcoholics call them moments of clarity, the over-caffeinated call them epiphanies) that, when one peels back the layers of history, look an awful lot like a seemingly forgotten revolutionary occasion. It doesn't seem like the move that...
When you're a musician as prolific as M. Ward is, invariably there's going to be a running monologue that takes shape in your output but never before has the influence of the singer's prior releases (either on his own or with Zooey Deschanel as She &...
Since the style first appeared in the 80s, there has always been a bit of mania and a perceived sensory deprivation attached to the rituals at an all-night rave. Between the crazed beats, the car alarm sirens and the laser light show, it's easy to lose oneself in...
Five years. It has been five years since Ian Thornley crawled out of the crash site left by Big Wreck to begin his solo career. His debut solo outing, Come Again, proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the guitarist could at least summon the raw and bludgeoning power...
Karen Dalton's In My Own Time comes with a compelling back story. Dalton—a lost voice of the early 60's folk music boom and regular in the Greenwich Village scene—was one of Bob Dylan's favorite singers. Nonetheless, she didn't record until...
I have to be honest here, I totally slept on this band last year. It’s actually hard to say if I slept on it or just never heard it, because I know how it felt to hear them for the first time and there really is no way I would’ve passed on this. It’s...
The thought and popular image of those artists lucky enough to get to make music for a living is often greatly romanticized by those outside of the business. On the outside looking in, fans envision professional musicians as often leading a life of leisure as...
Who says that, after a career spent mining the sadder end of the emotional spectrum and winning healthy amounts of praise for it, changing creative streams is a bad idea? Sure, such moves might mean alienating that meticulously cultivated fan base, but Morrissey has...