It almost feels like sacrilege to say it, but more than most of the “new underground” bands that surfaced in the post-Nirvana maelstrom that suddenly found so many acts with readymade credibility (bands as far flung as The Flaming Lips, Constantines and Beck were all ranking members of this crew), few seemed to need the presence of a major label so badly as The Dandy Warhols. Always flaunting a significant pop jones and boasting a mercurial writing palette along with...
Who would have thought that going home again would be the catalyst that Sloan needed to experience a rebirth? Having recently resurrected their own label, Murderecords, and rejoined its roster for the first time in sixteen years, Sloan established carte blanche for themselves to follow up 30-track monster Never Hear The End Of It from 2006. Rather than attempting to go even bigger though, for their first album back the band chose to cut Parallel Play in their Toronto rehearsal...
After watching Death Angel absolutely rule Slim's only three months earlier, I gotta admit that I didn't think there was any way that they could possibly do it again. Now that the band has been on tour for a few months (their first in over seventeen years) I figured it would be damn near impossible for them to give the same amount of energy as they did the last time they played their hometown of San Francisco. I also knew...
When Ground Control photographer Muhammad Asranur caught The Dresden Dolls at The Fillmore in San Francisco, he experienced more than just a concert. In fact there was so much that GC's editors received an entire folder of photos dedicated to the goings-on surrounding the show, in addition to the performances of The Dresden Dolls and Vermillion Lies. What follows are some notes from the evening: The whole evening was festive. As we waited in the line outside, we were greeted...
If your echo-y vocals and plinking piano quota has been rather lacking this year, then take heart: The Walkmen have announced the release of their fourth album You & Me (fifth if you count Pussycats, which we totally do). The album—which was written over the course of two years in sessions split between Philly and New York—will be proceeded by a small tour in August (including Bumbershoot and the Rifflandia Festival) to whet appetites and stir up a frenzy. That's...
Although it was the "coldness" of Ladytron's kraut-inspired analog drenched music that first attracted me to them, I have remained a huge fan of the band as their music has continued evolved. With each album Ladytron's sound has warmed and morphed into a perfect combination of electronic synth and pop, and having heard a few tracks off the soon-to-be-released Velocifero, I knew this album was going to be no exception. It had been a couple of years since I had...
Last year when Brant Bjork and his Bros released Somera Sol, it found the singer finally making his exit from the alt-stoner rock box he helped to furnish with Josh Homme in Kyuss for the grungier climes of Chicago-esque, martini-brandishing sardonic rock a la Urge Overkill. It worked—audiences cheered and Bjork seemed to take well to the poppier format. What no one could have guessed however is that, with Somera Sol, the singer was simply looking for (and found) another...
Radiohead fans are a peculiar bunch. They’ll slog through the muck and the mire to watch the band perform outdoors in a deluge and they’ll pay full price for the band’s latest album when they could get it free. But if online message boards are to be believed, they will not condone any attempt to collect the band’s top hits onto a single album. Several hundred people, in fact, have signed an online petition titled “We Don’t Need Radiohead Greatest...
Listening to Black Lungs’ debut full-length album, it’s impossible not to feel as if, in making it, singer/guitarist Wade MacNeil has beaten some very long odds. For the last seven years, MacNeil has played second guitar to early breakout member Dallas Green in post-hardcore, screamo kings Alexisonfire and backup singer to both Green and Alexis screamer George Pettit. Given the size of those two personalities, MacNeil has seen exactly none of the limelight that the band has enjoyed and even...
There’s a popular theory among those generally disinterested in new music, the narrow-minded and the foolish that all of the great ideas in pop have already been thought up; that all modern rock outlines is a prolonged denouement or journey into mediocrity that all genres of music have experienced historically after the last splash was made. The pity of it is that those people will feel vindicated if the only record they hear this year is Amy MacDonald`s This Is...