After covering three big arena shows during the last month of 2008, it was time to get back to my roots. I may have turned 40 less than a month ago, but there is still something very appealing to me about a hot, sweaty, loud venue packed full of metalheads. And maybe I'm getting a bit nostalgic in my old age, but when I saw the line-up of 3 Inches Of Blood, Toxic Holocaust and Early Man, I had a...

It’s been thirty years now since Howlin’ Wolf died and, in the decades since his passing, no one has matched the raw vocal power that he commanded. Wolf could punch listeners in the guts and wind them with just one syllable of course, but it was when he moaned in that low, ground-shaking baritone that everyone listening could feel it resonate in their bone marrow – they singer’s potency and presence was just that powerful. For those reasons and more,...

Can a leopard actually change his spots? With the proliferation of splinter celled bands and “super groups” that have appeared over the last few years (The White Stripes begat The Raconteurs, both The Bastards and The Transplants have wormed their way out of Rancid, Alexisonfire has exploded since first appearing to yield no less than four part-time projects – City And Colour, The Black Lungs, Bergenfield Four and Fucked Up – and  Toronto indie rock fixture Jim Guthrie has recently...

Portland's Dead Trees burst onto the scene last year with the deliciously shambling Fort Music EP, a ragged morsel of guitar-pop crumpet that winked knowingly at the Beatles and the Clash while delivering big-chorus fun and grimy, vintage amp sounds aplenty. King of Rosa, their full-length debut, recycles Fort Music’s "Shelter”—a hook-rich, power pop gem that would likely trigger widespread pants-creaming at a Yep Roc board meeting—and adds nine more honest and direct tunes to the pot. No trickery is...

There’s no doubt about it, Weird Owl’s sophomore album (first for Tee Pee Records) is unmistakably the work of men that recognize their luck at getting the opportunity to make exactly the record they always dreamed of making. How could I know that? It’s apparent from the opening rush of “Mind Mountain” that, with its languid pacing, deep-in-the-pocket drums and relaxed guitar rumbling that this is the brand of stoner rock that the members of Weird Owl have been listening...

There are times when there’s just something instantly classic about an album and, while it might not be easy to place at first, it’s most definitely there and anyone listening knows it from the moment the record starts playing. It might be the beat that does it, it might be the inclusion of some well-worn riffs or instrumental motifs, it might even be something as simple as a familiar timbre in the singer’s voice – but there’s something and, when...

Yeah, it’s been a while, sue me! Actually, please don’t sue me because I don’t have any money. It’s been a while partly because I’ve been in a holi-daaaze, but more because of the lack of any good music to come out since October. I mean, no one tours during the last two months of the year—especially in Chicago—and no one puts out any records that aren’t re-issues or Deluxe this or Special that, so that means no After the...

In spite of the fact that the band nixed the exclamatory punctuation from its name before the release of 2008’s Pretty. Odd., it’s pretty obvious that no one at Chicago’s Civic Theater had heard the news the night that Panic At The Disco took the stage there. From the moment the stage lights come up and the band kicks into “We’re So Starving,” an ecstatic, estrogen-laced (how do girls hit and sustain those squealed notes at concerts anyway?) eruption goes...

In the last couple of years, as bands like Broken Social Scene, Attack In Black, MSTRKRFT, Tokyo Police Club and Alexisonfire (among a ton of others) have won international attention and bands like The Constantines enjoy renewed interest, it’s almost as if the musical community in Canada simply appeared from nowhere in the minds of people outside the country. Granted, there’s no escaping the achievements and influence of artists like Neil Young and Leonard Cohen, but it’s as if any...

Oh, how times have changed for Dave Grohl since first emerging from the wreckage of Nirvana in 1995. Back then, the ambitions and hopes for the Foo Fighters were small – no one was sure if a breakaway act from the single most loved and lauded act in grunge was even possible (it hasn’t been, to date, for Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic) or if it’d last beyond a novel initial interest.  The band started very much like other first-timers have...