For those unfamiliar with the history, Manic Street Preachers have, by turns, enjoyed and endured a very strange ride since forming in 1986. Originally one of the musical breed that generated the Britpop wave of the late Eighties (along with The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Blur, Oasis and innumerable others), the Manics crested to fame the old-fashioned way: on the strength of great songs, a killer live shows and a set of personalities within the band that were so mysterious...

When a band chooses to start operating in the rapturous realm of pop-punk, eventually they'll be presented with a choice: they can either crash and burn in spectacular fashion and spend the rest of their careers trying to make back the ground they've lost (see The Offspring), they can knickle under and become vacuous pop tarts (see No Doubt) or they can tough up, bite the bullet and become a rock n' roll band (see Green Day). While exceptions have...

Alex Turner doesn’t care about you. You may have bought tickets for him and his band at the beautiful Fox Theater. You may have sipped a pre-concert Greyhound at Café Van Kleef in anticipation. You may have waited around for the half-hour it took him and the rest of the Arctic Monkeys to hit the stage. But, they probably would have shown up and played anyway. You didn’t need to be there. You were just an extra set of molecules...

In art, as is the case in life, it has been proven time and again that the population of intelligent people in the world fall into one of two groups: those that consider themselves to be smart and those that simply are. So what’s the difference? Those that assume themselves to be intelligent usually come by the notion honestly – they might be scholarly, they might be good (if fairly humorless) conversationalists, they may be the ones that their friends...

After about nine years spent etching a small but indelible mark upon the Canadian punk scene with Simple Plan, it's understandable why guitarist Sebastien Lefebvre would want to step out on his own. While three chords and a quiver full of songs about girls were great for establishing Simple Plan as stalwart (if fairly unremarkable) purveyors of skate/pop punk, doing the same thing over and over again gets tiresome after a while (Simple Plan's been doing it for three full-length...

Remember when you found out they were making a film version of Where the Wild Things Are and it was a bit worrying until you realized that it was being handled by Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers? Well, you can have that same feeling of relief about the movie's soundtrack, masterfully orchestrated by and attributed mostly to Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, along with an outfit including Bradford Cox of Deerhunter, Dean Fertita and Jack Lawrence of The...

I refuse to classify this band. I’ve read a lot of reviews, over the last day or so, of Japandroid’s album, Post-Nothing, and every writer has devoted a solid paragraph—at least—to comparing them to another band, to a genre, to a sub-genre, to a sub-post-ultra-minimalist-extra-such and such a type of music/band, and I refuse to do that. And if you say a word about the White Stripes, I’m going to punch you in the mouth. Okay, I go back on...

The timing is perfect for this band to shine. Phoenix has blown up this year with their May release of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Right when we have heard it all and found ourselves a little tired of the pop-synth rock groups, Phoenix showed up with a fresh vibe and an amazing album to tour with. And apparently, I learned that not all French guys are pretentious jerks. The sold-out Wednesday night crowd at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom was hyped up after...

Have you ever started following a band, not because you were their biggest fan right away, but, because the group seemed to bear enormous potential that you hoped they would eventually realize? You found yourself following them, hoping they'd get the change to get it right eventually? There's no denying that such a pleasure is very private, (sort of) misplaced and self-absorbed (claiming victory when the band makes it from a comfy, third-person seat?), but it's no less gratifying when...

As Tragically Hip singer Gord Downey once said, the problem with cutting out a living in the arts (particularly in music) is that, as soon as you subscribe to one discipline, all of the others look that much more attractive. Actors want to make music (as exemplified by Keanu Reeves, William Shatner and Juliette Lewis), musicians want to act or paint (Hugh Dillon, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Gibby Haynes or Ronnie Hawkins anyone?), and painters (like Andy Warhol) along with...