'Ey youse,I know whatcha thinkin', yer thinkin', “Well it's about time Donnie, we're startin' ta get the shakes 'ere! Whatcha got?” What can I say? Whenna boss is away (fi' dollar Billy went south fer a couple o' weeks), I see no reason ta get ta work! He's back though, so I am too; wit' a great big bag o' SWAG ta boot! Some of it is even good an' addictive, junky! The mos' addictive tunes're stuff likethe Noah Hyde...

It's rare to catch a show at the Metro in Chicago and have room to breathe and take it all in. Which made it all the more surprising when openers The Right Now took the stage to no more then 40 people. The Chicago band, led by the boisterous Stefanie Berecz, took a few songs to get warmed up, but it was fun to watch them win the crowd over. By the end of the set, the crowd swelled as...

Remember a couple of months ago, when Dave Grohl announced that Foo Fighters were going to go to sleep for a little while but left no further details? Some fans got nervous; Grohl has proven to be a bit of a workaholic over the last fifteen years, lending his talents to dozens of albums, so the announcement that the singer/drummer/renaissance man was in the wind got fans wondering and worrying. Fans shouldn't have worried in the slightest. Yes it's true...

I know it’s been a while since I’ve written one of these, but hopefully things are about to change. And by that I don’t think things will change at all. Witness the second edition of the Vinyl Vlog where we review both the vinyl package and the music within the grooves of Cat Power's Sun – one of this year’s hottest* records. Cat Power’s new album Sun is a great comeback for the blog because it does everything a Vinyl...

Cat Power is weird, don’t you think? First of all, her music is hard to describe (Aggro-easy-listening? Minimalist-throaty-pop? Girl-band?). Second, there’s a bit of a mystery surrounding Chan Marshall a.k.a. Cat Power. Like, what’s the deal with all those cover albums she releases? Why has she zeroed in on felines as the ideal source of energy? And who exactly is she kidding when she says that her astrological sign has any effect whatsoever on how/when her new album got recorded....

Hey Junky,Dj'ou eva notice how weird it c'n be sometimes an' somethin' jus' falls outta the sky an' into yer lap? I's weird right? That happen'a me the otha day; I w's walkin' down along Avenue B – I hadda pick up somethin' fer somebody – an' I w's thinkin' about who I could hit fer more SWAG fer da Report. I hadda coupla sources in mind, but then outta the corner of my eye, I saw dis ol' tape...

Over the last few years, several artists have managed to successfully resuscitate the theatrics of old vaudeville and revival productions (see The Dresden Dolls and Amanda Palmer’s solo work – to name just the biggest of big names) and actually made the form interesting again. It’s been really cool to watch and, with that success at hand, it almost seemed inevitable that interest would shift to another fading style of music, and someone would try to start reviving it too....

A couple of years ago, I attended a wedding where the bridesmaids entered, dancing down the aisle, to Muse's "Resistance." "Really?" I thought. "You're already thinking your marriage is 1984?" But of course they weren't. They were thinking "Love is our resistance!" They were thinking, "What a cool song!" And therein lies the problem with Muse. I had actually never heard of Muse until they were tapped to headline Coachella. I had to ask my younger, hipper friends who this...

Honestly, what's a punk like me doing reviewing an album like this? Shouldn't I be reviewing the new Pig Destroyer record instead? Wait, maybe the punkest thing I could ever do would be to review a folk album. Thinking outside the box and going against the establishment and all that is a punk attribute. Yeah, that's it! Sprinkle a couple of "Oi!"s throughout the review and it will be a perfect fit! Nevermind what I said earlier. No, but seriously....

Remember the first time you heard Tweaker about ten or eleven years ago? It was an unusual time; the Matrix movie trilogy was setting box office records (the series hadn't become disappointing yet), Marilyn Manson was still being called “the God of Fuck” instead of “a pasty. bloated codfish” and “parody of himself,” and bands like Tool and Gorillaz were still holding sway on the charts as they pushed the boundaries of what was permissible in alt-rock. It was pretty...