As of 2010, it had been fifteen years since Urge Overkill last released a studio recording and, by then, the general consensus was that Chicago's most notorious alt-rock band was a creatively spent entity. They hadn't broken up and were still touring (one tour featured a stop at North By Northeast Music Conference in 2007), but Geffen Records had cashed in its chips with the band and no one had come rushing in to fill that void. There was talk...
Peter Elkas' new release Repeat Offender is an album I wish I liked. Since stumbling across his 2003 album, Party of One, I have been anxiously awaiting another release featuring the same balance of sexy swagger, gritty guitars and infectious songwriting. 2007's Wall of Fire was adequate but was more sexy than gritty, and consequently disappointing. Elkas last appeared on my radar when he officially joined Joel Plaskett's backing band and signed to Plaskett's label, New Scotland Records. Repeat Offender...
Awrightcha goonie little junkies,So how's tricks ova-dere where you are? Rippin' the world apart yet? Or jus' spikin' yer vein? I got some stuff right 'ere that'll soothe that itchin' no question, ya wanna taste? It's all pretty potent too; this week I got some big names, some little names, some single songs, some EPs and even a full album 'at ya can nab – it's all yours fer the takin'! Some of it's pretty friggin' good too! I tracked...
You've heard the first part of Sonny “Skrillex” Moore's story before. Born in 1988, Moore joined post-hardcore band From First To Last in 2004, and ended up becoming the group's singer for albums including Dear Diary, My Teenage Angst Has A Body Count and Heroine. He then announced his departure from the band in 2007 to pursue a solo career in electronic music. To date, that solo career has been well-received, with Moore having produced a landmark album for Bring...
Ever have one of those days when you stop, after the lunacy and hectic pace of the day has seemed to calm down for a minute, and look around at the mess your life has created (either personally or professionally, the source of the indignities you've had to live with is irrelevant) around both itself and you? At that moment, everything seems at its most hopeless and you feel compelled to collapse from exhaustion/resignation/misery/self-loathing because it seems like a viable...
Remember back when 'punk' wasn't synonymous with a music genre? Around 1075 or '76, 'Punk' didn't have anything to do with music as a stylistic term – there was just this group of bands in the Bowery who were starting to make some noise and get a bit of notice for it, and a little magazine which happened to be called Punk that happened to be writing about them. The bands didn't have a whole lot in common other than...
How many bands can say that they had a three-year period as tumultuous as Pearl Jam did between 1993 and 1995 and were still a band by the end of it? The number can't possibly be too large because the sequence of events through that period of time in Pearl Jam's chronology was truly extraordinary; in '93 Pearl Jam surpassed every expectation anyone could have had for a follow-up to Ten with Vs., only to be saddled with being the...
The wonderful thing about a record is that, after it's out, it remains there for listeners to find when they're ready to hear it. First impressions aren't ironclad either; as time passes and tastes change, a particular album may begin to sound better. Such is exactly the case with Vitalogy for me. When the record first came out in November of 1994, Pearl Jam was already treading a pretty fine line in my eyes; Ten didn't thrill me like it...
Currently skipping across the globe on their first world tour, Kopek seems like an unlikely group to hit such international stardom so early in their existence. Formed in 2002 and apparently finding their singer with a local music magazine ad, Kopek were regular contestants in local battle-of-the-bands competitions. Working their way up the battle-of-the-bands circuit (yeah, who knew those still existed, right?) all the way up to a global battle-of-the-bands where they won $100,000 and a world tour, Kopek showed...
Awright youse, We're gonna have lotsa funnis week but, first, we gotta bow're heads fer a minit. One of our own checked out'is week, an' we need ta have a moment o' silence fer Poly Styrene, who useta be da singa fer X-Ray Spex, but fell ta cancer this past Monday. She's survived by her step-father John Lydon and mother Nora Forster. Bow yer heads fer a moment o' silence.... Awright, le's get ta business – we go work ta...