It might sound unwarranted or unfair given the staggering amount of attention that the band has received since “Sex On Fire” blew up two years ago, but who really likes Kings Of Leon? I mean seriously – this is a band that got its' start churning out half-baked and partially-lobotomized, cast-off grunge-isms (remember “Molly's Chambers” or any of Youth And Young Manhood in general?) only to be reborn in 2008 as a bunch of wildly overwrought, country-fried indie rockers and,...
Hey there junkie, Sorry I'm a day late. I hope you hadn't started twitchin' or something, but I got held up outta town. I went down to Atlantic City for a little R&R an' to see what there is to see down'ere – I ain't never been before. It was sorta cool, but it's an uptight town; if you go there, you hafta be on yer best behavior, or they'll mess you up big time! That's actually parta why I...
If you haven’t heard of The Drums, then you’re probably not an avid reader of New Music Express, Cliché Magazine, Clash magazine or Rolling Stone, where they have been lauded for their sound, even garnering the unabashed title ‘Best Hope for 2010’ by Pitchfork. You probably didn’t follow the BBC’s Sound of 2010 poll. You probably don’t reside in Brooklyn. You may have, in fact, been living under a rock. Or at least that’s my excuse. The point is, if...
When Beck first released Odelay in 1996, it was to a very eager and excited audience and to critics just waiting to sharpen their claws. The success of “Loser” earned the singer an advance critical chorus of “probable one–hit wonder” and, given the deluge of small–potatoes albums released between Mellow Gold and Odelay , such...
What's in a name? As fashionable as it might be to say that such qualifying measures are meaningless or useless when it comes to the arts, musicians live and die with generic names and their perceived status in pop culture. Think about it – how many new buzz words crop up per year/per month/per week to define the sound of the new “it” band? How do people view it on the basis of that nomenclature after its' fanfare has waned?...
When A Perfect Circle announced that they would be playing three nights in San Francisco, and playing a different album in it's entirety each night, I was a bit torn as to what show I wanted to attend. In the end I chose the third and final night, where the band would be playing eMOTIVe, their album of cover songs. Knowing that they had not really played these songs live before, I was a bit curious to see how they...
Alright junky, si'down a minute an' listen up, So I thought I was doin' good by ya. I thought, y'know, thirty new bits o' liberated music a week? That ain't bad right? 'At's what I thought, an' prolly whatchu thought. It was a good deal, but then the holidays started hittin' and the gates swung open; what I'm findin' now makes what came before look like a drop in the bucket or like I was holdin' out on you! I...
Trying to measure the influence of The Lowest Of The Low and their debut album, Shakespeare My Butt, on modern rock is impossible. That isn't any kind of overstatement – when the album dropped in 1991, an entire generation of Canadians (and those Americans living close enough to the border that they picked up Canadian radio stations) heard it because the album managed to penetrate several schools of sensibility at once; for some, the band's smart-assed (and shockingly literate), punk...
Over the years, Screeching Weasel has built a deserved reputation as one of the truly great skate punk bands of the Eighties and Nineties. Since first blasting out of Chicago in 1986, SW has hammered flat, honed and perfected their sound to the joy of their devout and rabid fan base but, in all of the band's storied history, one album has always stood out as the “whoops!” release, and even the most dogged and vocal Weasel fans will sheepishly...
How does one adequately express when a new album sounds good without actually sounding new? It's not that the songs are re-recordings of old material done to reflect the changes a band has undergone over time, just that the album sounds incredibly derivative of several other sources compiled into one. Listening to Smoke Or Fire's new album is like that; from the opening run of “Integrity,” listeners will be able to pick melodic and instrumental similarities between some of the...