Whether or not you were a fan of the 1990s pop punk movement, there is no denying how influential the Northern California label Lookout! Records was in bringing the genre worldwide attention.
The Anne Hathaway-starring indie Song One could have been a solid, sweet film if it were not so wrapped up in trying to be too many other things. The movie casts Hathaway – who also produced – as Franny the older sister to Henry, who dropped out of college to be a musician. Franny, who has been estranged from her brother and mom, comes back home after her brother is…
There is no shortage of books out there about The Who. But London-based music journalist Mark Blade has proven there was room for at least one more.
It seems like Ryan Reynolds can’t catch a break. He’s a good, often great actor, depending on the role. Not content to simply play the leading man to Sandra Bullock’s leading woman in one mindless romantic comedy after the next, he often seeks smaller, darker fare, which explains his choice with The Captive. Unfortunately this small-budget thriller, pairs solid acting with a weak, hard to follow plot.
Atlanta has a long and storied history of churning out hip hop and R&B greats. But a much smaller and less publicized scene there boasts some pretty impressive rock bands. Radio Birds is just one of the latest.
In the long, sometimes rocky, but almost always impressive career of Judas Priest, there are a handful of albums that stand out from their 20-plus releases that are considered by any sensible group as “Classics”: 1978’s Stained Class, 1979’s Hell Bent for Leather and 1980’s British Steel. Often left off that list though is the equally impressive Defenders of Faith, the band’s ninth studio album.
The Scottish pop band with the American name is yet another example of a great band that does remarkably well across the globe, with the exception of here. Despite some decent attempts over the past two decades, of the band’s eight records, only one (their 1989 debut, Southside) showed up on the U.S. sales charts, only reaching #88 before disappearing.
Mike Pace has been away from the studio for quite a while; seven years to be exact. That’s the last time Pace, at that point the front man for the indie pop band Oxford Collapse, put out a record. Judging from the bulk of the 11 tracks that make up the debut for his new outfit, Mike Pace & The Child Actors, the sabbatical was time well spent.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more definitive scholarship of Metallica, one of metal’s most polarizing bands, than the massive two-volume set by music journalists Paul Brannigan and Ian Winwood. The first book, Birth School Metallica Death, covering the band from its founding up to 1990, came out in 2013. The follow-up, Into the Black, picks up from 1991 and carries on through the release of some of their more…
Geronimo Johnson’s first novel, Hold It ‘Til It Hurts, was a finalist for the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction and earned the author a slew of fans among book critics. His follow up, Welcome to Braggsville, proves that the immensely talented writer was just getting warmed up.
San Antonio’s Americana savior has flirted with the Blues throughout his three-decade career, but Terraplane marks his first complete baptism into the genre.
It’s been two decades since The Juliana Hatfield Three put out their one and only album, but based on the band’s sophomore effort none of the trio allowed rust to settle in over the years. Whatever, My Love is a perfect bookend to 1993’s much-lauded Become What You Are.
With their seventh album, the Indiana-based indie rock/folk/country band Murder By Death has managed to turn in their best collection of songs in their more than decade-long tenure. That’s not to say their earlier efforts were weak – far from it – but on Big Dark Love, the five piece have written a nearly flawless record that blurs the line between haunting (“Big Dark Love”), beautiful (“Strange Eyes”) and at…
The second season of Banshee saw this Cinemax series start to pivot from being an oddly fascinating action show with an original setting and complex characters to being a run-of-the-mill action show with ridiculously gratuitous sex scenes shoehorned in between gun fights. But there’s still hope for the show.
It’s a surprisingly common story: local band builds up a big regional following thanks to DIY recording and constant touring; gets discovered by a major label, signed and before the album comes out the record company implodes and the band goes back to near obscurity.
Crime writer, turned TV/movie producer George Pelecanos travels a path he knows all too well in this latest collection of stories and that should be quite fine with readers. With nearly 20 novels to his name, the short story format (and one novella) is a new one for Pelecanos, but his writing is just as effective with the shorter restrictions he’s given here.
Yup, a band that goes by the name Sugar Candy Mountain is just as odd and trippy as you’d expect. But that’s part of the appeal of these Bay Area neo hippies. On their latest, Mystic Hits, they churn out a baker’s dozen of swirly guitars, vocal feedback and layers and layers of keyboards that sound like a mix between The Beatles in their LSD years and Tame Impala.
The past couple for years have been a virtual nirvana for fans of the brilliant, yet short-live ‘90s Power Pop band Jellyfish. Despite only having only released two proper studio albums, Omnivore Records has been slowly putting out a slew of gems from the California band. It started by releasing both Bellybutton and Spilt Milk on vinyl, followed by a trio of never before released records: Live at Bogart’s, Stack-A-Tracks…