New Orleans legend Professor Longhair (ne’ Henry Roeland Byrd) may have died close to 40 years ago, but labels are still uncovering and releasing flawless live sessions the piano great recorded over the years and “Live in Chicago” is no exception. Recorded at the University of Chicago Folk Festival in 1976, this eight-track collection is one of his best posthumous sets so far.
Frank Turner is a stellar musician and songwriter with an appeal that attracts folk fans just as much as punk rockers. But on the surface, despite an increasingly higher profile with each new record, he seems like an unlikely candidate for a traditional rock memoir. Just shy of a decade into his solo career, all indications are that he’s still a long way off from putting the guitar in the…
It turns out all the handwringing about the death of guitar bands was a little premature. On their fourth effort, Gleasons Drift prove riff-heavy barroom rock is still alive and thriving. Based out of the coal region of Northeast Pennsylvania, just a little north of Philly, Gleasons Drift play straight forward rock, reminiscent of everyone from The Replacements to Springsteen in his less moody periods. It’s seems pretty appropriate that…
“The first time I drank piss was on a fire escape overlooking downtown Los Angeles.” So begins the memoir on NOFX. If you can get past that first sentence, the payoff is worth it.
It didn’t exactly seem so at the time, but the Dixie Chicks were more punk rock than just about any band while Bush Jr. was in the White House. Sure they seemed like just another Saccharine Southern Country band from Texas when their major label debut “Wide Open Spaces” came out in 1998, but soon after they would start to show an admirable “Screw it, we’re going to speak our…
They may be less than two years removed from their last record, Sunswimmer, but the Athens, GA band New Madrid have grown substantially confidant in that time. Their latest, magnetkingmagnetqueen, is a far more ambitious record, more experimental and it works – most of the time. The vocals may get a little lost in the swirl of guitars, (especially on a song like the sonically brutal “Shades”) but the fact…
Emotional Response has been churning out a slew of great 7”s lately, spotlighted some impressive, but oft overlooked indie pop and power pop bands. The three-song split from Linton + Stewart and The Aislers Set is more proof that their streak continues.
The actor slash musician route has always been one littered with mediocrity. Jon Patrick Walker just may be one of the few exceptions.
Thanks to a little help from current go-to producer Brendan Benson, Nashville’s MODOC (by way of Indiana) have put together their best album yet. Following up last year’s live record and 2013’s decent self-titled debut, both hinted at greater things and the payoff is definitely all over “Automatic And Voluntary.”
For the past few years, Philadelphia has been making a name for itself by churning out unpretentious punk rock, from Beach Slang and The Menzingers to Cayetana and Sheer Mag; it’s hard to escape distorted guitars in the City of Brotherly Love. Despite sharing a zip code with these bands, the four-piece Rosu Lup have opted for a very non-punk rock sound.
As far as I can tell, this is the only one book out there on the genre-defying traveling carnival known as The Butthole Surfers. But given the amount of research that went into Let’s Go To Hell, there is no need for anyone to ever attempt another tome on the band. The author, James Burns, who also runs the Texas band’s archive (christened “Anal Obsession,” naturally), has pulled off a…
There have been countless articles and rock bios written about all of the British bands that were formed after witnessing the Sex Pistols live. Add Texas punk hardcore band The Dicks to the list. Garry Floyd saw the band at their notorious San Francisco show, eventually migrated to Austin and told anyone who would listen that he was in a band called The Dicks. Years later, he actually put that…
Like other wildly talented young musicians who died tragically young, there is always a move to release all unheard recordings made during their lifetime. The result is not always ideal. In the case of Buckley, who drowned in Memphis in 1997 at the age of 30 with only one studio album to his name, the recordings have all been pretty impressive, including the latest, packaged as “You And I.”
Philly’s Up The Chain self-describe their sound as “Neighbor Rock.” I honestly have no idea what in the fuck that term means, but if their latest, “The Prison Break,” is any hint, I’m already huge fan of the genre.
Dropped down like Manna from heaven (or more specifically, from the folks at Legacy Records), Elvis Presley fans across the globe can now pick up the ultimate fan set – a 60-CD collection of records from The King. Included are restored versions for 57 Presley albums originally released from RCA between 1956-and-1977 in addition to three separate discs of rarities dating back as late as the ‘50s.
The Brooklyn-by way of Athens- indie band Great Lakes has been spent the past two decades churning out five records and managed to keep their sound evolving thanks to a collective of musicians that have come and gone with nearly each effort. Guitarist/singer Ben Crumb has been at the center of each record and for the latest, “Wild Vision,” he pulled in singer Suzanne Nienaber, bassist David Lerner, drummer Kevin…
With their third record in as many years – and third full length since 2012 – Eureka California are proving to be the Willie Nelsons of indie pop; not a year goes by without at least something new.
If you don’t know XTC from NOFX or INXS, this is the wrong book for you. But anyone who has heard the sweet thinking man’s pop music created by Andy Partridge and the boys, knows that there are few contemporaries who were able to turn a phrase as deftly as XTC.
The Duplass Brothers have turned in some of the most impressive dark indie comedies of the past decade (The Skelton Twins, Safety Not Guaranteed), but it wasn’t a given that their thoughtful, subtle humor would translate to TV. Turns out it does. With Togetherness, the writer/director/producer/actor sibling team has turned in a remarkably fresh half-hour comedy for Generation X and beyond.
Robert Rodriguez has made a career out of gory, DIY movie fun, taking B-Grade camera tricks and actors and creating hard-to-look-away stories. He’s managed to do the same thing on TV with the adaption of his From Dusk Till Dawn movie. In the second season, the morally-questionable bank robbing brothers Seth and Richie have split up, but are each still dealing with vampires south of the border.