Some albums come along which make me want to give up on hip hop. Part of that has to do with personel and practices in the business; for example, there are many artists who are great to be featured on a track but should never put out their own albums. Who’s at the top of the list for me in this category? Fucking Rick Ross. While his appearance on one song or another has been nice, I can’t name a...

I have two concerts on my belt that come up at the top of my list when I get asked the question of all questions when I get a music head in my face: “What’s the greatest concert you’ve ever been too?” Yelle, a little band from France that 99 per cent of the people I say this to never know, quickly followed by Childish Gambino in Los Angeles after he put out Camp. I paid for that album with...

Serj Tankian, lead singer of the world renowned metal group System Of A Down, has been trekking down the solo road for half a decade now. He’s left in his wake a slew of music that, improbable as it might seem, is even weirder than SOAD itself. That said, you can’t help but get sucked into his imagery and infectious beats. Harakiri is Serj’s third and latest solo album, released on July 10th, 2012. Harakiri is, at its heart, a...

Everyone who has been following Gaslight Anthem over the last few years has been waiting for the band to make Handwritten. Fans knew they had it in them, they just had to wait for the band to realize it too; after getting their shit together in the underground (the band's XOXO album, Sink Or Swim, was well met, in spite of having no attention from big-name publications), The '59 Sound introduced Gaslight Anthem to a large audience as the working...

Aw yer damn right I'm back junky!How ya been ya vein-spikin' reprobates? I know whatcher sayin', yer cursin' ol' Donnie cause he ditched on ya an' lefcha itchin' fer eight weeks. Sorry about'at, but I wis outta town; I got held up doinn'is thing outta state an' that thing turned inta a held-over stay inna cell while I awaited my hearing an' so on. Not that it makes much difference ta youse right? The point is, here I am ta...

Aw yer damn right I'm back junky!Yeah yeah yeah, I know whatcher sayin' addict, I lef'cha hangin'. What c'n I say? I got hauled up for a little turn down south while I wis onna run an' hadda wait it out 'til everything cooled offta get back innere. Thanks fer waitin'. Awright, right before I got caught, I wis puttin' tagetha anotha SWAG Report fo' ya junky, an' wouldn'cha know? Nobody found my stash! It wis right 'ere when I...

Ever heard a record that you've decided you can't stand within the first minute of its run-time, but find your foot tapping to before long? When it happens, it's a maddening thing; you find yourself being very angry that something in this music which was so repugnant to you at first is clearly affecting you. I had a moment just like that the first time I started listening to Forever So by Husky; as first, the subdued and almost dreamlike...

Sometimes the only way to understand or even hope to enjoy a record is to just ride it out from one end of the line to the other and see where it goes, and then take stock of how you feel about it and what you got from it – if anything. More than most bands, such a passive listening practice has proven to be the best way to approach working though any album by Liars; since the band began...

It's remarkable when you really think about it – with the release of the CD/DVD set captured live at Metropolis Studios in London, singer Colin Blunstone and keyboardist Rod Argent marked their fiftieth anniversary of playing together under the Zombies moniker. In that time, they had some successes which few could even hope to enjoy (and some of them happened right in the beginning – one of The Zombies' biggest hits, “She's Not There,” was recorded the very first time...

Seldom is a band able to venture into undiscovered countries or sound completely unique within the rock idiom anymore. Part of that has to do with the availability and user-friendliness of recording software; digital recording platforms have become so easy to use now that it's possible for any numbskull with a free weekend, a laptop and a creative urge to make his own magnum opus with little or no experience and about as much instrumental ability. Such ease afforded means...