If ever someone was looking for a perfect example of a band's sound and its image just not lining up, they'll find it on Semi Truck – the debut album by Silvergun & Spleen. The clash is perfect; gazing at the cover of the album (which features a picture of all four bandmembers – including a ravishing set of twin sisters – mugging it up in the cab of a transport truck), we're given the impression of a rough and...

Awrightcha Junky bastids,So how much – whatchacallit – "rhetoric" are ya up for taday? Are ya itchin'? Well tough! Yer gonna hafta hear aboutit from me, cause I said so! Don' worry though, it'll be worth it! I scored a live tune from Silversun Pickups, I dove inta the vaults over at Aimee Mann's spot an scored four from there, nabbed a couple from California Wives' coffers, swiped a kick-ass tune from Murder By Death an' one from La Armada,...

There's no easier way to say this than to just say it: as satisfying as Dinosaur Jr.'s newest albums have been since the band reconvened in 2007, I Bet On Sky is the one fans have been waiting for. Why? Because this album finally begins to show some new growth and forward motion beyond the fantastic body of work that the band released in the Eighties. On a comparative scale, 2007's Beyond was about as “just okay” as a Dinosaur...

It might sound deliberately contrary, but some records just slide by my sensibilities too easily. For me, the hook in a song isn't so much the device which convinces me to listen as it is the thing which gets stuck in my head and helps me remember the band at all; the hooks are the mnemonic devices I use to associate a band's sound with their image and makes their name both recognizable and memorable. Without that identifier, the sound...

One of the best habits that anyone who calls himself a “critic” can get into is to ignore all the hype which might be swirling around a band and just wait patiently for a new album to come out; it will prove definitively how much attention is actually deserved. That practice certainly served me well in METZ' case; the first time I heard about the band was from some scene-jumping hipster worm. He was singing the band's praises just loud...

After ten years of the band treading and then re-treading the same folky ground, most of those listeners who had run across Two Gallants could have been justified in thinking they probably had the band pegged. Over that time, the band has won a base of respectable (if not necessarily impressive) size, and no one really seemed to be complaining as they picked up what the band was putting down. That may have been all well and good for them...

Since Bob Dylan made his fantastic (second? third?) return with Love And Theft in 2001, the singer's fans have seemed to split into two communities: those who are great big fans and those who are great big critics. Those communities are so opposed in structure that it's almost comical; the fan community is only too happy to take any old thing that Dylan releases and tout it as the new gospel without question, while the “Critics” strike a dubiously high-minded...

Since her last full-length of original material in 2006, the woman born Charlyn Marshall has broken off a relationship with Giovanni Ribisi and cut off enough of her hair to get Robin Williams through chemotherapy for back cancer. The actor (Ribisi, not Williams) has since moved on, having married the despicably scrawny and grammatically pretentious Agyness Deyn as a poor substitute for this one-of-a-kind amazing basketcase. The hair, meanwhile, will presumably continue to grow. Clearly, Marshall was of a mind to shed...

More than in any other music genre, there is a treacherously thin line between awe-inspiring and awful in the world of metal. That is the line which Obey The Brave straddles on their debut album, Young Blood; by turns, this record succeeds brilliantly as singer Alex Erian and guitarists John Campbell and Greg Wood collide and make a perfect sound which combines the crunch of metal with the atmospherics inherent to both emo and prog – but there are also...

From the moment “Blood Red Youth” eases its way in to open Art History – California Wives' debut album – some listeners will just have a flood of images come rushing at them all at once: John Hughes movie posters, sequences out of Christian Slater movies, scenes from Cure, Pavement and Smashing Pumpkins music videos circa 1992, Replacements music videos released between 1985 and 1990 and more. Listeners will be surprised at how vividly and vibrantly those images come rushing...