Ever get the impression that you might be bearing witness to a trend forming? Less than a month after the release of Sufjan Stevens' incredible instrumental offering Run Rabbit Run that offered a thrilling outlet to explore, now audiences receive a second such performance in the form of The BQE. Well, sort of. True, The BQE is a multi-player, orchestra-centered, instrumental score, but that's really where the similarities between this album and Run Rabbit Run end. In spite of the...

As the story goes, when Rosanne Cash was eighteen years old, her father (Johnny Cash, for the clueless) gave her a list of one hundred essential country songs as a gift to educate her about what he did at work. That list lay fallow in the singer's effects for decades until the listener inadvertently let the existence of it slip in 2006; and that's when the wheels started turning. Hounded by fans to know the contents of the document and...

Since forming twenty-eight years ago, Slayer has established itself as one of the most blistering and aggressive metal acts in North America – that's on the books, it's not news. The band has won a wildly dedicated following on the strength of their hard-and-fast-as-hell brand of thrash that could (and probably has) break land-speed records for depravity; the tales of other bands revered as heavy hitters in their respective genres that have quit tours with Slayer (Alice In Chains leaps...

To paraphrase The Tragically Hip, a couple of years ago when most of his bandmates started splintering off from The Strokes and starting their own solo and side projects (drummer Fabrizio Moretti formed Little Joy, Albert Hammond Jr. has released two solo albums now, and bassist Nikolai Fraiture co-founded Nickel Eye) singer Julian Casablancas must have started getting nervous. He didn't want to get ditched and, besides, what good is a rock singer without a band at his ready disposal?...

Since Dave Grohl first rose from the ashes of Nirvana in 1995, he has managed to set himself apart from the Grunge scene that first drew him notice and establish his own unique voice that has won its own dedicated fan base over the last fourteen years. It wasn't easy and the road to the lauded position he now occupies (having played with everyone from Josh Homme to Jack Black to Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones) is littered with...

In just six short years, Joss Stone has run through an accelerated career arc that has been both blessed and cursed with a trail of the highest peaks and the deepest valleys. The differences in reception for albums like The Soul Sessions,  Mind, Body & Soul and Introducing Joss Stone is just staggering – Stone has been the next big thing and regarded as creatively down and out – and remarkable given that it was taken it has taken other...

Sometimes, as hardcore rockers get older, they find that it gets progressively more difficult to summon the fire required to pound out aggressive rock on a nightly basis. They slow down, ease up and, while the flames may not have died, they dim or at least start to burn a different color. When Damn 13 singer Adam “Doom” Sewell announced the birth of Bastard Child Death Cult last year, in spite of the  ominous overtones in the new band's name,...

Without a doubt, one of the most hotly anticipated records of 2009 has been Wolfmother's follow-up to 2005's smash self-titled debut – if only because the album represents an against-the-odds release. At the beginning of this year, drummer Myles Heskett and bassist Chris Ross departed from the band, leaving singer/guitarist/songwriter Andrew Stockdale to sink or swim all on his own. The verdict was still out on whether Stockdale could pull it off even in the twilight of the recording process...

At the end of the day, when the books finally get opened on bassist Mark Sandman and his band Morphine, it will be found that while rock history is dotted with bands that made a tremendous impact but seemed to come from nowhere, Morphine set a whole new template for the concept. At a time when bands were either expanding the scope of their music to points they could never possibly reproduce on stage or self-analyzing – in some cases,...

For the last nineteen years, Converge has led a modest but respectable career mixing metal and hardcore (someone once went so far as to call it 'Grindcore') and has amassed a decent following for their efforts – there's no denying that – but even the most dogged fan would have to admit that there has always been something just a hair off. That fractional discrepancy has been the grain of sand in albums like Halo In A Haystack, Petitioning The...