Inspiration is a funny thing—a remarkably capricious beast to try and pin down. If one asks them, most musicians tend to make one particular sound the focal point of their interest; it inspires them, consumes them, drives them and acts as a springboard for their own work that, while it might incorporate other sounds in its periphery or grow in other directions, simply could not have existed were it not for that “one thing” that overtook their imagination initially. The...

After the red hot and poetic political dismissal she expunged in 2007's American Doll Posse (one of the most prescient and incendiary commentaries to be released in the twilight of George W. Bush's presidency), Tori Amos hasn't so much returned to center for Abnormally Attracted To Sin as she has continued running – pushing boundaries and exploring new terrain. While, granted, the album does cast passing glances to the singer's former songwriting territories (“Maybe California” and “That Guy” could...

Twenty-three year old U.K. grimer Lady Sovereign, S-O-V, Louise Amanda Harman or whatever you'd like to call her, is pretty new to the American scene as she only broke ground a few years ago with Jay-Z's Def Jam backing her Public Warning album up. Her single "Love Me or Hate Me," featuring Missy Elliott, received good airtime and became the opening theme song to Oxygen network's reality show "Bad Girls Club." Now, she's back under her own independent record label,...

Rare beauties emerge in Iron & Wine’s latest release with a two-disc collection of a rare, never-before-heard and new-to-print collection of unyielding goodness. From hidden treasures of 2002’s The Creek Drank the Cradle to soundtrack-bound leftovers and side-picks from The Shepherd’s Dog in 2007, this sampling from the span of Iron & Wine’s career is nothing short of magic, especially for those rabid fans—however rabid folk fans can get. The first disc is a deliberate, lower-fidelity collection of soulful...

Hope and belief, particularly when combined in a desperate mind, can be potentially intoxicating things. For example, when the Kirkwood brothers reunited under the Meat Puppets moniker and released Rise To Your Knees in 2007, it felt and (at the time) sounded like they had arrived – again. The songs sounded pretty good and, because it had been so long since anything bearing the band's name had even held a candle to the dynamism they once possessed (about eleven years...

In his 47-year tenure as a professional musician, Bob Dylan has imposed a series of stylistic modifications on his songwriting style to satiate his muse (he's been “reborn” and born again – as just two examples) but usually by the time those changes are presented to fans, they're so complete, seamless and confidently presented that they're regularly referred to as “comeback” albums – even if the creative ground covered on them is fresh to him. With that common critical approach...

When a show sells out well in advance at The Great American Music Hall, there is a pretty good chance it's going to be, at least what I consider, "epic." I can think of more than a handful of shows that went down at GAMH over the years where tickets were snatched up weeks beforehand, and every single one of them turned out to be nothing short of incredible. Amebix, Jello Biafra, The Melvins, Social Distortion, Neurosis and Motörhead are...

For the last twenty-four years (give or take), NoFX has enjoyed a sort of extended adolescence because they've managed to keep a perfect balance of sophomoric lyrical content (jokes about the human body as well as its tolerance for consumption of drugs and alcohol and the comic results of testing those limits) and prescient social and political commentary that always sounds fresh and biting rather than repetitive. To date, it's been an easy road to run but, maybe because the...

…Well, that was fast. About three years ago, Anti-Flag finally stepped up (some would say, “Sold Out,” but that's over-reaching unnecessarily) and signed a deal with a major label conglomerate in the form of Sony BMG, RCA and Red Distribution. The theory for the change was sound enough, they wanted to reach a larger audience and make a greater impact upon the world at large with the political manifesto so integral to their image. The added bonus was that the...

As any musician can (and will) tell you, sometimes songs – good ones, bad ones, odd ones and ones that just don't fit anywhere – get written and then written off almost immediately. Sometimes it's simply a matter of the musician's own interest that finds them falling by the wayside; sure, it might be a good song, but it's not representative of where the musician or group in question wants to be heading creatively and so it gets buried under...