Of Note
London sisters Hannah and Colette Thurlow used to play together in a punk band called the Vulgarians, but when they decided they wanted to pursue a more restrained sound, they thought of the Melvins — …
Bass Drum of Death is a Mississippi garage rock band, a duo. In fact, in the beginning it was just John Barrett, who, not unlike Tim Lowman (a local guitarist who performs as Low Volts), …
My friend Dan recommended that I check out the Brazilian singer Céu, but he was a little embarrassed about it. “She’s kind of a Starbucks artist,” he said. I knew what he meant: to call …
Songs about big regret for the terminally hip is Rhett Miller at his worst. But at his best he’s like that person in your creative-writing class back in college who always had better plot lines …
If you’re going to do ’60s- and ’70s-style soul in 2012, you’d better be good. More than that, you need to sing soul like you mean it. For that reason, I was not won over …
The term “supergroup” was already old when Time got around to explaining it to their readers in 1974. Having been coined in 1969 to market the British band Blind Faith (Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ric …
“It’s actually ‘Bron-cho.’” Right off the bat, I’ve mispronounced the band’s name. The ch, it turns out, is soft. “A lot of people make that mistake,” says Jonathon Ford, the band’s bassist. He’s on the …
Grad school meant hours and hours of reading by myself. Music kept me company, but it had to be a certain kind of music. Lyrics would distract me from my studies, so almost anything with …
“I was semi-detached from the world, but not from myself,” says Ian Astbury. The Cult lyricist and singer is on the phone from Los Angeles. He explains where his head was at during the writing …
Yacht is sometimes spelled like the boat, sometimes all in capital letters, sometimes as Y.A.C.H.T., and sometimes with a triangle in place of the “A.” And Jona Bechtolt and Claire Evans invariably describe their venture …
“Make a tricky record,” Warren Spicer once said, “and then spend the next year learning how to play it live.” He co-founded Plants and Animals, a Montreal indie trio, and, yes, their music is tricky. …
When the Spiritualized song “Hey Jane” began streaming online a few months ago, a friend of mine said it was really good...and then it went off the rails. I told him I thought it didn’t …
When a band of SoCal punk veterans calls itself OFF! you know what you’re going to get, but that doesn’t mean you will be prepared for it. OFF! takes its name from a brand of …
During the mid-2000s, the music industry produced a rash of bands that embraced roots. Dobros were heard, percussion sounded DIY, and arcane instruments such as toy piano were embraced. Standouts included Cage the Elephant, the …
Score one for the old school: Prima Donna, a five-piece from Los Angeles, may be the best garage band of all time, albeit 40 years after the fact. They started in 2003. What we call …