Every generation has a band that is perhaps too complicated to fully comprehend, but once you take a step back and allow the vivid soundscapes to envelop your body and seep into your veins, it begins to make sense. Sigur Ros is one of those bands. Being a fan for years, and having seen them live and actually met Jonsi down in San Diego while we there for the Takk… show, their performance and their very presence is imprinted on...

1993. High school parking lots, headphones, closed bedroom doors—Smashing Pumpkins were everywhere the disaffected youth needed them. Notebooks bore the long, skinny heart logo and guitar teachers taught simple, memorable songs like “Disarm” and “Today” to students begging to impress friends at bon fires. Torsos that once advertised Iron Maiden and Metallica now flaunted Siamese Dream as the new heavy. No need to follow the Pumpkins’ career through the 90s into the 21st century—it’s been told a...

There was nary a distortion pedal in sight. The evening was clean and crisp like a boot camp bunk—except, of course, for Rob Crow's formidable beard. Perhaps it was said beard that needed all the room that The Grove of Anaheim provided. And provide room it did—the venue itself seemed like an attendee, the kind that stands there with arms folded, daring the bands to entertain him. The Little Ones seem like a modern day version of The Monkees—fun and...

I have to be cautious with my wording when I recommend Gogol Bordello to friends. Foremost, I have to make sure they understand the extreme matter-of-fact tone that I use when I say they are undoubtedly the greatest live act currently performing. Certainly, I could understand how my friends might find this hard to believe: how could the world’s greatest live band be so obscure? I must also tiptoe around the discussion of their “genre,” since calling them Gypsy Punk...

Of all the events of my life that have led me to be the audiophile that I am, none was more shaping than a week of summer camp in which my counselor mentioned to me that I should listen to the new Radiohead album, OK Computer. This was mid-July 1997. Since my counselor was infallibly cool, I immediately picked up the album as soon as I got home. I had a small boombox at the time which would purr and...

"It's a contributory factor to epilepsy. It's the biggest destructor in the history of education. It's a jungle cult. It's what the Watusis do to whip up a war. What I see in the discos with people jogging away is just what I've seen in the bush."-Harvey Wood, Director General of the Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation, on disco (1979) Harvey Wood (who is a square and a racist) speaks of disco disparagingly for the reasons outlined above, and it is the...

I awake to a friendly, apologetic voice of a gal pal asking for forgiveness for her birthday-bash plans that have taken us to a rather rashly hip, hot and sticky London club with a DJ bill tough enough to satisfy any pair of skinny jeans. The venue is three stories full of drunken asymmetrical haircuts and runny eyeliner. It’s a wonder how any brace of dancing shoes manage to stay sane and not get lost in this sweaty, pungent, rock...

A pregnant woman stood stage left amongst a packed Troubadour crowd for Wednesday night’s sold out Tokyo Police Club show. For a few hundred revelers and the potential hipster in the making, tonight would mark the first audio/visual outing of the young group who hail from Newmarket, Ontario, otherwise known as Canada. Just infants in the big scary world that is indie rock, and really their second time stepping into Los Angeles, it was more than likely that the band...

Last night, Ground Control (or at least three members of the GC team) was lucky enough to catch Tokyo Police Club as they played to a packed, sweaty house at L.A.'s Troubadour. You can look forward to the forthcoming review, but take our word for it now, they kicked much ass, barreling through a bunch of songs from their forthcoming album. Forthcoming album you say? Yeah, that's right. They've in fact just signed to Saddle Creek to produce their as-yet-untitled...

If a new Interpol album and tour wasn't enough for the post-rock fans out there, the Liars have confirmed their own new album as well as plans to tour North America alongside Interpol this fall. "Liars", the Liars' fourth album, will be released August 28, 2007 on Mute with the first single "Plaster Casts of Everything" available via iTunes (or for you old school fans, 7'' vinyl) on August 14. According to early statements, Angus Andrew of the Liars seems...