Of Note
Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca has been getting some of the best reviews of any release this year. Music site Stereogum asked, “Wait, is Bitte Orca the best album of 2009?” Note the question mark. New …
You know that raspy voice. You know that tiny figure, dressed in bad-girl black. You know that flawless face with the heavy eyeliner. You know that black hair. You know that big-guitar sound punching out …
Lady Dottie and the Diamonds is an indie-rock band retrofitted with blistering soul licks and fronted by an old-school ground-stomping R&B scorcher. They won in 2005, 2007, and 2008 for best blues at the San …
John Vanderslice had been playing music for several years, first as a member of MK Ultra and then as a solo artist, but his career didn’t really take off until he set up camp in …
The Scorpions, a German heavy metal band, date back to the ’60s. Around that time, the trend for hard rock guitarists was to break from the blues-rock tradition by playing fast, long, clean solos that …
We all get excited when our favorite old bands reunite, and we tend to overlook the fact that the musicians probably hate each other and are only getting back together because their solo careers have …
We tend to think of the ’80s as a time of synthesizers and performance-enhancing hair products, but the decade was also a time of musical revival. Record companies began reissuing their old vinyl releases on …
When White Rabbits hit the scene in 2007 they were a burst of sonic energy, slightly disorganized but with enough collective animation to rival powerhouse acts like Arcade Fire. Fort Nightly sounded like the work …
Tentacles, the debut full-length from Long Beach’s Crystal Antlers, opens with a looping keyboard sound, but if you think this is going to be some kind of electronic album, you’re in for a shock. Soon, …
The history of air guitar has got to include a footnote for Joe Cocker. In the late 1960s, Cocker, a British rock star, was mainly known for two things: A voice that — although agreeable …
A recent picture of the band Propagandhi shows four guys, a few of them approaching middle age, who look more about golf or office jobs than flat-out aggressive rock and roll. Founded in Manitoba in …
St. Vincent is the nom de rock of one Annie Clark, a young singer-songwriter shredder who has done time backing Sufjan Stevens and the Polyphonic Spree. When I first heard Marry Me, St. Vincent’s debut …