Those familiar with Palms and specifically who is in the band will not be surprised by what they hear on the band's self0titled debut at all. Such a statement might sound condemning but, in fact, it is intended to be an endorsement of the music; most times, all-star bands end up being boring or poor because the band goes out of its way to ignore the things that each bandmember contributing got a lot of praise for before in the...

While his name might not be the single most memorable in music at first (Dave Tough was also the name of a well-known jazz drummer in Dixieland and Swing era of the Thirties and Forties), it would be hard to overlook Dave Tough's voice after hearing this seven-inch. The singer had already made a pretty impressive mark on the Roots scene with the Silver Hearts but, all alone and singing as tentatively and quietly as he is here, those who...

Raw Geronimo play prog-structured music with the ferocity of punk rock. They combine tribal rhythms, guitars which alternate between aggressive and ethereal, and Laena Geronimo's no-limits voice to create a sound that hits hard and lingers long. After playing in a number of bands – including bass in The Like, and violin in Dante vs. Zombies and Skyline Electric, among many others – Geronimo assembled the band to focus on her own vocals and songwriting. They just released their debut...

To say that Nirvana's third and ultimately final studio album In Utero was 1993's most polarizing record would be the understatement of a decade. The unadorned sonic rawness of Steve Albini's recording laid bare every primal nuance of the most confrontational yet vulnerable material Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl would ever record. And with its 1991 predecessor Nevermind having sold some 30 million copies, singlehandedly returning honest rock 'n' roll to the top of the pop charts, In...

Remember when punk rock didn't need to have a social message or studious comment in it to be great, it just needed to be loud, fast and either about a girl or about getting in trouble? That was great, that was fun and, if you grew up in Canada in the late Nineties, that was Chixdiggit all over. Other than being one of the first Canadian punk bands of their era to get widespread American attention (Chixdiggit's first album came...

Is it my lack of knowledge on the Flaming Lips or has the band's style changed a lot since Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots? Perhaps it's because, again, I'm arriving at The Terror so late to the game and my musical life right now consists mostly of catching up to the old stuff I never got around to when the albums were first released and the flurries of excitement were thicker. In the spirit of catching up, here we have...

It's hard to easily define what Washed Out's third album, Paracosm, is. On one hand, there are moments on the record which very closely resemble the spacey, campy, dopey folk that the Flaming Lips have been known to indulge in, but it's noticeably more faceless and boring. On the other hand, the album has moments of hypnotic and spacey easy listening which sound as though they could have been pulled right out of the 1970s and must be timeless because...

It was a long time in coming, but now it's official: Florida's Less Than Jake are back on Fat Wreck Chords. Following the 2012 reissue of the Fat classic Borders & Boundaries and the subsequent EP collection Greetings & Salutations, it only made sense to bring LTJ back into the Fat folds for real. On November 12th, we'll release their brand new full length entitled See the Light. This is the band’s first proper full length containing brand new material in over...

Hey Junky, Haya doin'ere ya reprobates? Afta da las' time I came callin' I decided ta make ya wait an' sweat a bit fer yer nex' bag o' SWAG, 'cause I wanted ta see if yu'd miss me – but I think I've made ya wait long enough now – don'chu? It helps'at I gotta great big bag o' what'll soothe yer bones too! Awright, dis week I got all kindsa goodness. Fer youse what like yer religiously tempered stuff,...

Those who followed Soundgarden during the band's glory days in the 1990s may remember that, as moody as the band's members were given to being, bassist Ben Shepherd was the darkest, quietest and most perfectly removed man in the group. True, the band made lots of newsprint together, but think about it – how often did anyone read a quote from the bassist? He was almost always painted as “the quiet one.” The same was true when Shepherd appeared in...