Speaking as a confirmed critic of just about everything My Morning Jacket has ever affixed its name to, I must confess that I really wasn't expecting much from singer Jim James' new solo album (his third), Regions Of Light And Sound Of God. I mean, when your main band is already riding a polished and shiny re-imagining of everything that was hippy, dippy, trippy and folky about the 1960s and '70s and your first side project (Monsters Of Folk) is...

Awright fall in, ya junkies,How're things wi't youse? Me? I'm doin' good, butcha wouldn' know it by da lightness o' my bag o' SWAG dis week. I only scored fifteen tunes fer youse ta sample dis time! The upside izzat ther all pretty good. Firs' , I gotcher mainstay thrills like Aesop Rock, Low ann'a Stars – ya know, da bands'at everybody knows I scored a new tour EP from Stars, a new remix from Aesop Rock ann'a song from...

It's unusual to actually be able to see a change in a band's fortunes coming, but one listen to Magneta Lane's WitchRock EP will show those who hear it that great things are on the horizon for the Toronto-based trio. That isn't meant to imply that good fortunes haven't visited the band before – Magneta Lane's first two albums and EPs saw the band rise brilliantly out of the Toronto scene as a great live act and able songwriters –...

With Come Cry With Me, Daniel Romano's transition from the punky songwriter he once was to the County & Western troubadour he's worked so hard to become is as complete as the Seventies “glam country” era suit the singer is sporting on the album's cover. On this record, all the turns and (occasionally awkward) growth periods that the singer had to go through since putting his band Attack In Black into stasis are suddenly validated; true, Workin' For The Music...

After spending the better part of three years recalling the high and low points of his personal and professional lives with meticulous care and knee-buckling candor (see the Eels' greatest hits and B-sides/rarities compilations, Meet The Eels and Useless Trinkets, as well as an autobiography, Things The Grandchildren Should Know) and then composing and releasing a sprawling and dramatic trilogy of albums (Hombre Lobo, End Times and Tomorrow Morning), there was no question that singer Mark Oliver Everett had ascended...

Anyone who has ever seen The Damned play live before already understands why the Live Live Live In London 2002 DVD would be a good watch, without necessarily knowing any of the finer points about the release. For the uninitiated though, the explanation is simple: The Damned put on a spectacle unlike any other on Earth. Since first appearing in 1976, the London-based band has delivered a mixture of goth and punk that is mesmerizing and made perfectly memorable and...

Remember back in the mid-Nineties when bands like Blur, Oasis and Stone Roses took all the campy, poppy sounds of the British Invasion, added some fresh, MDM-flavored urgency and sparked a new, intrinsically ironic Brit-Pop explosion? It was great right? The members of Beat Mark remember the magic of that moment fondly too and have endeavored to recreate it on Howls Of Joy; except they've (wisely) elected to skip the smarmy sense of irony that Blur and Oasis just couldn't...

Hey there, hi there, ho there Junky,I hafta get outta this habit o' soundin' so damned happy ta see ya, don't I? It's not at all fittin' wit' my nature, that's fer shoore. But hey, what can I say, I'm havin' a good day, an' yer the ones'at're gonna reap da rewards o' my good humor, ain'tcha? Damn rightchu are! So le's get right down innit awready! Ya know what I got fer youse dis week? I nabbed a whole...

It has always puzzled me why this album was called Slowhand, when it is one of Eric Clapton’s least guitar-centered albums. “Slowhand,” after all, was the nickname given to Clapton in the Sixties for his guitar playing prowess. Listening to the album now, I find it more puzzling than ever; coupled with the iconic cover picture of his hand on a guitar neck, it almost qualifies as false advertising. Or maybe it was meant as an ironic warning, for here...

Anytime a new Otep album comes out, I cringe a little bit before I start to listen to it because I don’t know if I’m ready to descend into the chasms of dark emotions which get opened up before me when I listen. I can’t listen to Otep all the time. I don’t need to – but I do need to hear them every once in awhile in order to open up the places where those deep, dark emotions lay...