It might be a little bit hard to believe now in 2013 – a decade after Broken Social Scene and the rest of the Arts & Crafts stable began making waves and winning fans – but there was a time when being a Canadian band, owning up to it and hoping to have a career outside the country's borders was a long shot. Outside of the “big heavies” (artists like Neil Young, Anne Murray, Leonard Cohen, Paul Anka and The...

No matter how it gets sliced or spun, ten years is a long time – for just about anything. In the music industry, a period of ten years can see the beginning and end of an era; really, the grunge phenomenon only ran from 1989 through 1994 and, before that, the world was still toasting hair metal bands like guns N' Roses and Motley Crue. By the same token, pop-punk bands like Green Day and NOFX were the mainstream squeezes...

According to legend, the material collected together on Greetings & Salutations form Less Than Jake is actually older than most fans might think. True, the album collects the Greetings from Less Than Jake EP (which was originally released in 2011) and the Seasons Greetings from Less Than Jake EP (which was released in 2012) as well as two other songs recorded during the same sessions so fans already know there's a bit of vintage, but the music actually has a...

It's remarkable how much something as simple as a change of format can radically alter a listener's perception of the music they're hearing. A good example of such a phenomenon can be found in listening to the vinyl release of July Talk's self-titled album which comes out as a Canadian import on January 8, 2013; while readers probably already know that I was already taken enough with this album to see that it shared my call for Record Of The...

If you were to look at a timeline of the concert reviews I’ve written for Ground Control, you’d easily surmise that I’ve gone into retirement. When my name pops up once on an annual basis for “best album of the year” lists, that’s one thing – but to inspire me to attend a concert again, that takes the epic promise of music that will make me think deep thoughts and stir my soul. Last year it took Opeth to drag...

Quintessential California punk band NOFX celebrate their monumental 30th anniversary by announcing the release of a limited edition deluxe LP collection of every studio album they have released, from 1988’s Liberal Animation through 2012’s Self Entitled on February 19th 2013. This limited edition collection will be available for pre-order today at: www.nofxboxset.com . The must-have collection of only 2500 pressings will include all of NOFX’s studio albums, as well as the 2xLP for the "7 Inch of the Month...

Awright junky,Here we go again, ya reprobates. Yup, da warm glow o' da Christmas season's ova an' my hangover from New Year's has faded a bit, so I'm startin' ta survey the damage. I's a little rough on my end but, lookin' atta amount o' stuff I wis able ta get fer dis first SWAG Report o' da year, I'm bettin' youse are gonna get well pretty quick! Seemed like, everywhere I turned, I had more stuff ta collect an'...

There are few things in the music spectrum more attractive than a band with a really, really melancholy and introspective demeanor who makes lush, beautiful and guitar-driven pop music. Those rock fans who have happened upon such groups have been both cursing and celebrating them for decades; bands like The Smiths, The Cure, The Screaming Trees and The Lemonheads have been baring their broken hearts and bruised souls for years and had it lapped up gratefully by fans – and...

The promotional material for Lady From Shanghai proclaims: "Smash the Hegemony of Dance. Stand still. … Lady From Shanghai is an album of dance music… fixed." That is an apt description of the music on Pere Ubu's fifteenth studio album. It almost sounds like dance music, but good luck trying to dance to it. This has been the essence of Pere Ubu's music for their entire career. It straddles the line between almost normal and completely off-the-wall bizarre. I'm not...

Is it possible for folk music to sound epic? Really, decades of history preclude the possibility of any listener expecting to be hit with an act of fantastic rock grandeur on a folk record but, on his fourth album, From The Top Of Willamette Mountain, singer Joshua James proves that such a record is absolutely possible to find. Not only that, but he can show listeners just how powerful his music can be and win hearts without leaving the “folk”...