Those familiar with the James “Whitey” Bulger story have been saying for decades how the tale of the ruthless Boston gangster and his look-the-other-way FBI handler is the stuff of Hollywood movies. The attractive, yet wildly violent Bulger grew up in South Boston and quickly rose up the ranks of the Irish mob, while another neighborhood kid who grew up down the street from the mobster, John Connolly, became an…
It’s a pretty rare occurrence when the guitar player is the focal point of a band. Yes, Jimmy Paige, Eddie Van Halen and a slew of other gifted six stringers have all received God-like adulation from their fans, but Anthrax is one of those rare instances when you can name check their guitarist, Scott Ian, before the long pause comes as you search around for the name of the singer.…
It’s always a tough act trying to replace a deceased front man. For every band like Big Country, who successfully (at least for a while) moved Alarm singer and longtime band friend Mike Peters to the front of the mic, there’s an INXS or Doors who have fumbled through various weak versions and ended up looking like sell outs. When the ‘80s band The Call lost its singer to a…
If you were a fan of Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside, don’t assume you know what her new album is going to sound like.
Released at a point when emo, screamo and pop punk were having an inexplicable revival in the early aughts, upstate New York’s Coheed and Cambria managed to sneak into the party when no one was watching the door, playing an impressive mix of prog rock and metal with a subtle inclusion of pop.
In just seven brief minutes, spread out over two songs, Durham, NC’s Skylar Gudasz has offered a glimpse at quite possibly the most starkly beautiful vocals to come along since The Cowboy Junkies’ Margo Timmins turned in her Trinity Sessions performance.
With just 10 songs, the duo Kool Stuff Katie has managed to sneak in the best debut of the year. Unfortunate band name aside, Portland-based musicians Shane Blem and Saren Oliver have crammed together garage rock, new wave, punk and a liberal mix of hooky pop music for an instantly-infectious sound that brings to mind everyone from The Cars and The Kinks to The Breeders and The Ramones.
Much like their first four efforts, Horse Feathers’ latest, So It Is With Us, is a collection of quiet, indie music that straddles the line between folk and Americana. And that is far from being a bad thing.
Yes, there are plenty of U2 bios out there – some good, some dreadful and a couple pretty great; There are also a number of hardcover, coffee table-sized books on the band out there, but music journalist Mat Snow has found a way to marry the two, pulling together a pretty solid, overreaching bio on the band and packaging it in a beautiful, three-and-a-half pound book crammed with fantastic photos…
When people dismissively ask “You still listen to punk music?,” they are actually thinking of bands like the four-piece Bad Luck. This group from Long Island and Daytona Beach, represent all that made the genre such a muddled mess of mediocrity in the early aughts. Pop music and seventh grade poetry masquerading as “Emo” all got mislabeled with the Punk tag, perverting a genre that was doing just fine without…
Hipsters and Baby Boomers rejoice! The latest, vinyl-only singles collection from The Turtles is a brilliant throw back and hopefully the start of a new trend.
Yes, as the closing narration of Money for Nothing points out, “the music video is a dinosaur” – thanks mainly to the fact that the network that created the need for them is stuck in a death spiral of reality TV car wreck/porn. But that’s what makes this documentary that much more compelling; it’s a look back at the music video from its earliest inception six decades ago (actually earlier,…
Admittedly the appeal for this book is a little narrow. That being said, if you’re a Star Wars fan, My God, this coffee table is nirvana between two covers!
Nostalgia junkies rejoice, Star Vista Entertainment has just released a mammoth 26 DVD set of The Wonder Years, arguably the best family dramedy to surface in the late 1980s/early 1990s.
Let’s get this out of the way up front: yes, it does seem odd that someone has written a bio on a band that was around for just over a decade; and a band that is (rightfully or not) maligned for their connection to the watered-down nu-Emo genre (I actually think a lot of the criticism is misdirected as the band were closer to Glam than they were Emo). It’s…
It’s a year short of the album’s 20th anniversary, but I’m sure Oasis fans will forgive the transgression now that (What’s the Story) Morning Glory is getting a proper three-disc deluxe roll out.
After more than a decade off, the Berkley power pop band Lunchbox is back with what is easily their finest collection of songs. A little goofy, but immensely fun, Lunchbox Loves You is 10 indie pop songs brimming with jangly guitars, sing-along choruses and plenty of handclaps.
Poor Andrew Earles. In, Gimme Indie Rock, his impressive new reference guide to Indie Rock, he managed to target a book squarely at the same crowd that will devour it in one reading, then spend endless hours online bitching about the records that were and were not deemed “essential.”
Shoegaze is still alive and well, thanks to bands like Denver-based A Shoreline Dream. Their fourth full-length, The Silent Sunrise, sounds like a band raised on old Lush, Ride and even a couple of Sigur Ros records. The nine-tracks here divert little from the basic formula of atmospheric guitars and Ryan Policky’s subtle vocals struggling to be heard over the deep lines of synth and guitars. The recording of The…
The only-available-on-Hulu comedy Deadbeat flew low under the radar this year, while other Internet TV series like Orange is the New Black and House of Cards dominated most of the media coverage. It’s a shame though, as this goofy, raunchy comedy is funnier than just about most of the new sitcoms that debuted in the same year, on the traditional networks and cable channels.