For a British band, the guys in Brighton’s Harker have a pretty intense love for American music. You can hear everyone from the Bouncing Souls and Dinosaur Jr. to Jimmy Eats World and the Gaslight Anthem on No Discordance, their debut full length. And while there’s no denying the inspirations are all over this LP, the band has injected enough originality into the offerings that they still come off as…
The Last Gang split up for a bit in 2009, having lost momentum and the energy to get going again. But thank the gods of punk rock or whatever deity you want to credit, singer/guitarist Brenna Red and drummer Robert Wantland roped in Sean Viele to take over on bass and The Last Gang gave it another go.
We may just be a few months into the new year, but it’s safe to say Professor And The Madman are the best punk rock supergroup we’ll hear all year. Fronted by Alfie Agnew (Adolescents, D.I.) and Sean Elliott (D.I., Mind Over Four), the rest of the band is filled out with members of The Damned, past and present – Rat Scabies on drums and Paul Gray on bass.
There’s always a sense of hesitation when a universally adored, classic band puts out new music after years away. The Pixies are probably one of the best examples. “Indie Cindy,” the 2014 post-reunion album that came after two decades of silence was… well, underwhelming. Expectations are just too high for most bands to meet. The Breeders, coincidentally made up of former Pixies bassist Kim Deal, may be one of the…
Ah, Yacht Rock – the guiltiest of all the musical guilty pleasures. That 1970s soft rock sound best associated with Southern California (though the bands were from all over). Think linen sportscoats and espadrilles; soft jazz, clean vocals, catchy hooks and maybe a little white boy R&B. Kenny Loggins? Yup; Hall & Oates? Sure thing; Christopher Cross? Are you kidding me? He had a song called “Sailing,” so, yeah; Rupert…
Emo bands never die… they just usually grow up and keep making the same records they made in the early aughts. In the case James Dewees (aka Reggie & the Full Effect), that means another so-so effort with hints of promise that ultimately falls apart after repeated listens.
Since their debut just over a decade ago, Scottish alt pop band The Fratellis have been churning out infectiously catchy pop, with enough jangly guitars and power chords to appease the indie kids, but also boasting a much wider appeal. And “In Your Own Sweet Time,” their fifth record, is no different.
Captain of Sorrow is a pretty apt moniker for Danish singer Hans-Christian’s latest project. “Racetrack Babies” – appropriately enough the name of his band that initially started work on this album before they imploded – is a soaring, ambitious, though certainly moody collection of songs.
Texas-based indie label Saustex Records has put out a wildly eclectic mix of punk rock and country albums and just about everything in between over the years. So, it seems rather fitting then that they would be the label to put out the equally eclectic solo debut from San Antonio’s Harvey McLaughlin. Tabloid News is ‘70s-inspired piano jamming at it’s best, pulling in influences like “Closing Time”-era Tom Waits, Randy…
As frontman for The Legendary Shack Shakers, J.D. Wilkes has been one of the loudest and earliest voices in the Bluegrass/Americana revival going back two decades now. And while it finally seems the rest of the music world is catching up with him, he pivots slightly on his impressive and impressively experimental solo debut.
One of the best new voices in Americana interestingly enough is Australian. Ruby Boots (Bex Chilcott) made her way to Nashville from her native Perth years ago and has managed to record a remarkably powerful follow up to her 2016 full-length debut; the record is part Country, Southern Rock, Folk and Blues with plenty of attitude.
Throughout his musical career, Luther Russell has been many things, but predictable is not one of them. Since going solo in the late 1990s (after leaving the Freewheelers), he has flirted with funk and soul music, power pop, punk rock and even hints of blues. The proof of this eclectic resume is all over the stunning two-disc anthology “Selective Memories.” The set also includes Russell’s work with the Freewheelers and…
Sounding as if they collectively woke up from a decades-long coma, Seattle’s Dirty Sidewalks play as if they stopped listening to music even before The Jesus & Mary Chain’s first break up in 1999.
Boy George was way ahead of his time. A band fronted by a male who performed in full make up and androgynous clothes was groundbreaking in the early 1980s, when gay were almost unheard of at the time. The fact that Cultural Club had remarkably catchy songs certainly helped prove that the band and Boy George were more than just a gimmick. In fact, their music is right up there…
It’s not too tough to pin down Abe Partridge’s influences on his latest. Everyone from John Prine and Townes Van Zandt to Dylan and Willie (hell, he’s even got a song about the Red Headed Stranger on his latest), can be heard throughout “Cotton Fields and Blood for Days.” And like his musical heroes, the Mobile-based Partridge shares a knack for strong storytelling, slightly off-kilter vocal delivery and a tendency…
Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers only put out one official record, “L.A.M.F.”. But, damn, what an album!
One of the most interesting phases in the life of one of music’s most interesting talents was Bob Dylan’s conversion from a Jewish liberal to an Evangelical Christian. Although the phase seemingly lasted only a few years, it’s a spiritual move that’s still being dissected more than 30 years later.
No band in the U.S. is more responsible for keeping Oi music alive for the past couple of decades than Rancid. By blending their love of everything from the Clash and ska to a slew of ‘70s street punk bands like Cock Sparrer and Stiff Little Fingers, they have managed to remind the world that punk rock is so much more than pop music with a distortion pedal. It’s rather…
Billy Idol is the latest ‘80s musical icon to get the vinyl re-release treatment and on reexamination it’s clear that Idol deserved every accolade he earned during that musically schizophrenic decade.
It’s almost a cliché at this point; Gabriel Starwood, a man-machine hybrid with a disco ball for a head from planet Vitrus, starts a band in Philly, pulling together like-minded androids and turns out a solid debut (2012’s Transmission). But here’s where it veers off that well-trodden pseudo human band Behind the Music episode. Five years later, Starwood is back with a fantastically-creative 6-song EP, proving despite the goofy origin story, they actually…