Of Note
It has to be weird to be John Lydon. I once saw Public Image Ltd. play in San Francisco and after a few songs, Lydon stormed offstage because people in the front row were spitting …
“I was reading Stephen King and a lot of that kind of stuff at the time, and I wrote a bunch of fiction songs,” Vaden Todd Lewis once told me about a song he wrote …
This is the age of the rock-star DJ. Where once anonymous technicians lurked behind turntables and electronics, now there are household names (more or less) with trademarked haircuts and masks. These guys (and they are …
Lord Howler: the name fits the band. Consider a four-piece hard-rock outfit, two of which are guitars along with drums and bass and all of it performed at a volume setting for those kinds of …
The guys in Dr. Dog aren’t going to set any fashion trends. They aren’t particularly charismatic. They don’t have a sound that fits into a trendy cubbyhole. They don’t have a terribly interesting backstory. They …
Maybe we all hold a certain fascination for bands with offensive names. That, and there always has been, at least on my part, a compulsion to hear the inner voice of a class of people …
Aimee Mann, meet Cold War Kids. Blood Red Shoes, yet another drum-and-guitar rock duo sound as if tutored by both L.A. artists. They were not. They are, in fact, a British band. Laura-Mary Carter and …
Communist Daughter’s “Not the Kid” rumbles along on a rolling rhythm. There is a part of the song in which singer-songwriter Johnny Solomon breathes loudly, like he’s running to get away from the rest of …
Like a lot of musicians these days, former Dresden Doll Amanda Palmer decided recently to skip the whole record-company rigmarole and fund her next record through the crowd-funding website Kickstarter. She started out with a …
“I’ve always been a little unorthodox about my drumming.” It’s Pam Delgado, Blame Sally’s singer-percussionist on the phone from San Francisco. “I played the drums so I could sing. I’m a singing drummer.” She mainly …
Moonface started out as a lo-fi solo project by Spencer Krug in what little time off he had from his other bands, Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, and Swan Lake (among others). To show how seriously …
Shoegaze, done loud. Ringo Deathstarr falls into the sub-grouping of rock bands that have learned a valuable lesson from forbears such as My Bloody Valentine: play your music loud enough and people will think you …
What got my attention focused on Sic Alps was the cover they did of Throbbing Gristle’s “United.” Not an easy task for a band with, say, a more ordered sound, but a perfect fit for …
A friend of mine says Terry Malts sound like the perfect combination of the Ramones and Jesus and Mary Chain: simple, irresistibly catchy rock ’n’ roll songs full of guitar feedback. Most of the bands …
“Goddammit, people! It’s a Saturday night!” Stephen Rey yells into a microphone. “Get your asses up here.” And they do, and then he and the Sex Trash pile it on. There are only three of …