Some questions simply require answers – no matter how hard people contemplate them. Like, doesn't everyone want to know what purpose Stonehenge serves? Doesn't everyone want to know if we're alone in the universe? Is there a god? What happens to us when we die? All of those are perfectly valid questions, but my own most pressing question at the moment regards where the value lies in pressing music into just one side of a record and leaving the other...

Remember when punk rock was a lawless, 'anything-goes' province that was more about personal expression than it was about stringing together just the right set of power chords? It's okay if you don't – it was a long time ago – but that torch still burns and Bars Of Gold have picked it up and presented it to a whole new audience with “Of Gold.” On the band's new album, Bars Of Gold go truly old school in their approach...

It is said that the night is always darkest before the dawn and, for his band's last two albums, Eels singer/songwriter Mark Oliver Everett has followed that adage to the letter. First, on Hombre Lobo, Everett got excited about love and every aspect of it – the chase or pursuit of it, the promise of it, the desire for it and the acquisition of it – and then the singer dove headlong into love's endgame just a few months later...

When watching Live Voodoo, it will suddenly hit long-time fans that it really is just that good to have Jane's Addiction back. There are a few heretics who will say the band never left; after they reformed in 2001, the band maintained a reasonably consistent touring and release schedule – but those fans who maintain this usually forget that JA split again in 2004, then reformed again for the NIN|JA tour in 2008. The permutation of Jane's Addiction which came...

Hey folks! Welcome to yer twenty-first edition o'the SWAG Report! I'm excited in a big, big way, 'cause I don't remember the last time I turned twenty-one. I know it was a couple o' years ago an' I remember goin' out, but things get hazy after that; I know I woke up nex'to a girl named Kat an' my buddy Tommy tol'me that he an'na girl hadda carry me home, but that's about it. She tol' me I was good...

The Dears may not reach every city until early next year, but fans can share in the musical magic of the fall residency dates by participating in a tour poster design contest.  Fans are encouraged to submit their own design for a poster to commemorate the eight residency shows – three consecutive nights in Toronto and Montreal and two in Brooklyn (tour dates below.) Entries will be posted on www.thedears.org , voted on by fans and the winning poster will be...

Ever been present and able to recognize when you're witnessing an exceptional moment? It's not always easy to do because, nine times out of ten, you're usually doing nine other things at the same time so you're only able to catch it peripherally but, when it happens in plain view, the sensation can be elating; it's as if everything fell into place in an almost charmed way and the resulting experience is both mesmerizing and fantastic. Such is exactly the...

You have to respect the chutzpah of an artist who chooses to work in the 7” vinyl medium. Think about it; basically, a band has little choice but to offer just two songs in hopes of establishing itself in a listener's mind. Even more daring are the groups who enter into a split 7” arrangement with another artist; then it's one side – one song – and the bands have to establish something memorable about themselves in hopes of not...

By now, it must be common knowledge that NoFX is one of the best EP-producing bands in modern rock – if not the best. Since the band first came together in 1983, NoFX has kept up a long tradition of releasing EPs, and has seemed to relish specifically in the 7-inch vinyl format; in twenty-seven years, the band has released no less then thirteen EPs as well as a multitude of 7” singles. That dedication would be sort of cool...

There's a sort of limbo period for any band at a certain level that can prove to be difficult to take initially, and it is the downtime that comes when a tour recently let out and it isn't yet time to record another album or head back on the road again. For The Flatliners, that time is now; with Cavalcade, the band's second full-length album for Fat Wreck Chords, now out for almost exactly five months and the first stretch...