I received this CD eagerly, but also nervously. I have loved Garbage ever since their first, groundbreaking CD, and I’ve been disappointed by them ever since their second one. That first album set the bar so high they haven’t been able to completely clear it since. In fact, it could be said that their first album invented the bar. Garbage had created something new then – studio electronics crossed with hard rock, pop songwriting married to a punk sneer. It...

While he doesn't come right out and say it in conversation (he doesn't seem the type), Hot Water Music bassist Jason Black is finding it difficult to hide his excitement. For the first time eight years, Hot Water Music is back on track with a new record label behind them (Rise Records) and a new album, Exister; the band's first offering of new music since they put out The New What Next in 2004. That's part of what has the...

For Iceland’s Of Monsters And Men, there was a very small amount of time between winning a battle of the bands competition (Iceland’s Músiktilraunir) and capturing international attention. First formed in 2010 as a duo between Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir and Ragnar “Raggi” Þórhallsson, the band had expanded to include four other members and produced a number one hit in their home country within a year. That hit, “Little Talks,” became the lead single on the Reykjavík...

After thirteen years of uniformly mixed media coverage, it can only be said that some listeners and critics have just always been confused by Gossip. When the band first burned out of Olympia. WA in 1999, critics couldn't decide how long this dirty shirt rock n' soul trio who owed as much to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion as it did to Sleater-Kinney was going to hold together because it just seemed like a great indie rock gimmick at the...

For over fifteen years now, Godsmack has been experimenting with new and innovative ways of telling people to go the hell away. “Get Up, Get Out,” “Keep Away,” “I Stand Alone”… and if you don’t heed their warning, be ready to face the consequences. Just ask Nikki Sixx, also known as the inspiration for “Cryin’ Like a Bitch.” They’ve got more ways to say “Beat It” than Michael Jackson could’ve ever dreamed of, if he had not spent all his...

For over fifteen years now, Godsmack has been experimenting with new and innovative ways of telling people to go the hell away. “Get Up, Get Out,” “Keep Away,” “I Stand Alone”… and if you don’t heed their warning, be ready to face the consequences. Just ask Nikki Sixx, also known as the inspiration for “Cryin’ Like a Bitch.” They’ve got more ways to say “Beat It” than Michael Jackson could’ve ever dreamed of, if he had not spent all his...

For over fifteen years now, Godsmack has been experimenting with new and innovative ways of telling people to go the hell away. “Get Up, Get Out,” “Keep Away,” “I Stand Alone”… and if you don’t heed their warning, be ready to face the consequences. Just ask Nikki Sixx, also known as the inspiration for “Cryin’ Like a Bitch.” They’ve got more ways to say “Beat It” than Michael Jackson could’ve ever dreamt of, if he had not spent all his...

Sometimes all the talent in the world really does mean diddly and all that really matters is that all the pieces lined up just right for an artist to get a shot at breaking through. Look at Laura Pergolizzi, for example; her professional musical career began eleven years ago when she released Heart-Shaped Scar under the name LP. It was a respectable effort, but it got lost in the shuffle because the time for it to arrive just wasn't right....

The Seventies were an interesting time for rock n' roll. By then, the music was already old enough to vote but rock n' roll had become increasingly about the show and the showmanship which went along with the music. By 1975, David Bowie was doing shows so big they famously used a cherry-picker arm  and featured the services of entire theatrical teams to block a concert and let him sit suspended over the first few rows of his audience. Elton...

Listening to Heaven – The Walkmen's seventh album (second for Fat Possum) – it's very easy to ascertain that the group's members are satisfied with what they've accomplished musically. That isn't to say that anything about Heaven is disingenuous or drab, it's just that there's an ease with which the band presents the album; there's nothing insistent in the music or lyrics, in fact it's very easy to get an image of guitarists Paul Maroon and Hamilton Leithauser as well...