The title is, no surprise, ironic. Not that the songs on this record could never be popular, or sell; there is no attempt to write a blatant hook, but a number of the songs do end up being catchy. Nonetheless, it is obvious that they were not written with either goal in mind. They were, instead, written for that noblest of goals, to express the songwriter's feelings. A more accurate title (I almost said "better,” but, as a title, the...

The four years that have lapsed since Avril Lavigne released The Best Damn Thing and smashed the world over the head with another kiddie pop anthem (“Girlfriend”) have been an incredibly turbulent time for the singer. In 1460 days, Lavigne has been married, broken into Hollywood, been divorced, toured the world on the strength of The Best Damn Thing, founded a clothing line and a line of fragrances, started work on a new album a couple of times and been...

A recent article on FutureHit.DNA declared rock music to be, finally, dead. It wasn't a theoretical or aesthetic argument, but one based on sales figures and chart positions. It claims that not only does rock no longer dominate the charts (it hasn't done that in some time), but it barely exists there at this point. Granted, the article focused more on songs than albums, but the decline in sales that it outlined held true across the board. While some may...

After the demise of Shotgun & Jaybird in 2007, singer/guitarist “Shotgun” Jimmie Kilpatrick has managed to land on his feet and etch a pretty impressive mark on the Canadian underground (first with his 2007 solo debut, The Onlys, and then backed by Attack In Black for Still Jimmie in 2009) but, as reputable as he may have become now, it's clear in listening to Transistor Sister that the siren song of D.I.Y. alt-indie rock had been whispering to him again....

Looks like ya hit pay dirt junkie! So after a couple o'weeks suckin' fumes wit' SWAG at a trickle, I gotcher first motherload o' the year right 'ere! Check this out bitch – I got thirty-eight individual songs 'ere, an' a whole comp ta boot! Howzat for a turnaround? None o' these songs is a limp dick either. Other than the crotch-grabbin' metal in the comp, I lifted tunes by Bob Seger, John Doe, Hey Rosetta, Matthew Dear an' Peter...

To paraphrase Johnny Cash (a.k.a. The “other” man in black, in this case), when the man comes around, everyone comes to see. In situations like that, everyone knows what's coming as well as when and where it's going to be so, when the announcement that Motörhead would be stopping to play a show in Kitchener, Ontario on their way to Toronto, not one metalhead in the southern part of the province didn't know about it, and most of them made...

Does anybody else’s jaw hurt? Because I’m pretty sure we all just got sucker punched by Thom Yorke.  After the release of In Rainbows in 2007, mum has been the word of the day for Radiohead. The creative megalithic beast that was their first album without EMI seemed to have worn the group down, but now they’ve come out swinging with a one-two punch of announcing King of Limbs a week before its' release date, and then releasing it a...

As much promise as a band might hold when it first appears on the public radar, sometimes there's no way to account for the sudden jump forward that they might make from one album to the next; sometimes a band might have been good on one album but they're absolutely mind-blowing on the next. Such jumps are not commonplace (if they were, there would be no such thing as a mid-level band) but it's really exciting when they do happen;...

Ever been walking along a busy city street at night and, out of the corner of your eye, you could've sworn you saw someone you used to love knowing? It could be anyone – a drinking buddy who moved out of town for work, the waitress who always used to smile at you when she delivered your coffee at your local shoppe but left unexpectedly for school, the girl who got away – but the possibility of reconnecting with that...

Remember when punk rock music didn't need a bunch of frills, bells, or whistles strapped to it in order to be considered good? It seems to have been a while since that was the case, and you can start flipping through your record collection to try and figure out when exactly punk started crutching on novelties, gimmicks, cross-genre blending and every other new trick in the book to achieve a short-lived “wow” factor, or you can just throw on The...