Has it really been four years since The Faint released Wet From Birth? That sounds crazy, but when I really ponder that fact, it seems about right. What the hell took them so long? Have they been in the Peace Corps, spreading their electro-vibe to third-world countries in need of something a little more modern? Did they get office jobs? Well, whatever they’ve been up to, they managed to find time to record a new album, Fasciinatiion, which is due...

This year’s Taste of Chicago, which kicked off last week with performances from soul greats Stevie Wonder and Chaka Kahn, has opened its doors for the next generation of soul and R&B performers. And the fact that Chicago is in the running for the 2016 summer Olympics, let’s just say that the torch has been handed off to the vivacious Joss Stone. A tad after 6:30 in the evening, Stone’s band—a nine-member ensemble, or ten if you count the lady...

Aimee Mann's @#%&!Smilers is arguably thoughtful, melodic songwriting, but also a puzzling mix of bland metaphors and stoned, lethargic production. At 14 songs, @#%&!Smilers but would have been better off without the tracks not mentioned here but is a worthwhile listen and unobtrusive enough for long drives and cleaning house. “Freeway” is a radio friendly rocking number about upper middle-class Orange County lifestyle. The line "You got a lot of money but you can't afford the freeway" is poignant in...

Crushable ingénue Lykke Li makes prommy, kissy slow jams and hip-hoppity feel-good dance tracks while revealing a few too many pages of her journal. While she thinks the music scene in her resident city of Stockholm could use "more people, and more heat, and more underground culture," the young Swede might help grant her own wishes. Undressed diary lyrics, sing-along choruses and a few gingerly delivered flat notes of the Little Bit EP gives her the unassuming charm of an...

In an effort to boost awareness for the August 19 release of the long-awaited album, Fourth, The Verve thought it would be a good idea to give fans a free mp3 that isn’t actually off the album. It’s called “Mover,” and apparently it was recorded DURING the making of Fourth, but didn’t make the final cut. So why not give away the scraps? Why not give away a song that actually made the album is what I want to know....

Over the last fifteen years, Chicago’s The Sea and Cake have cemented themselves as one of the most innovative, talented and ambitious groups ever to grace our eardrums. With their unique style of pop and arrangement, stemming all the way back to Nassau and The Biz, they’ve always been slightly to the left or right of where everyone else was sitting, molding style, form and intellect into albums that don’t ever get old. Despite their incredibly overoccupied schedules—Sam Prekop and...

Leave it to a writer to know exactly how to get the attention of other writers. As a whole, the members of the press corps tend to be a fairly predictable lot; there typically tends not to be a single one that won’t get a twisted little smirk at a dick or fart joke, few don’t have significant problems with authority figures and they’re always on the lookout for something that might be construed as controversial to pitch at their...

This is the album which made me a committed David Bowie fan.  I bought my first copy, a bootleg, in a little record store in Mexico City in the summer of 1974. I was exploring the city, and stumbled into this record store with a box of bootlegs on the counter. As this was the first time I had encountered bootleg records, I had to buy one. I selected the Bowie because I had just seen him two months before....

Rushing home from the airport after flying in from a business trip from Albuquerque, my focus had been getting back to my wife and our newborn so I could see him before he went down for the night. With that accomplished I flashed back to the plane ride into LAX where I spent time decompressing from my business meetings by scanning the impressive catalogue of material Old 97’s have amassed in their 15-year history, wondering how tonight’s set list would...

People generally seem to have a pretty strong reaction to Ted Nugent, and judging by the mustache and mullet-sporting crowd who were hoisting their Bud Lights and blurting out their battle cries of "Nuuuge!" well before Uncle Ted even hit the stage, the show at The Fillmore was going to be no exception. As he stormed the stage and proceeded to launch into an absolutely blistering rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” I knew it was going to be one...