There’s nothing wrong with cover songs. In fact, before Sam Cooke and the Beatles shifted the established paradigms, singer and songwriter were two entirely separate professions. And there’s also nothing wrong with a musician recording a cover album in the twilight of his career (Johnny Cash’s American Recordings attests to…
The Ruby Suns are the brainchild of Ryan McPhun, whose New Zealander ancestry led him to the land of his father before he joined his first band. Before that, he had played along to Nirvana in his parents’ garage. That experience, coupled with what he learned as a member of…
Kaoru Ishibashi (aka Kishi Bashi) came straight out of Berklee with a degree in film scoring and went right into performing, first with Barnum’s Kaleidoscape and then with his own group, Jupiter One. Along the way, he had stints with Regina Spektor and Sondre Lerche, and he was also a…
Country singer Mindy McCready is thought to have taken her own life this past weekend, on the front porch of her home in Arkansas. That part of her story has been widely reported. What you may not know, however, is that toward the end of her career and, ultimately, her…
Update, 2/22/13: So this story of the Smiths fan who held a station here hostage in the ’80s? It’s true…well, sort of. We caught up with former station employees and found the news coverage. Everyone has a different recollection it seems. “In 1987 a distressed young man in Denver, Colorado,…
By David Thorpe While perusing Insane Clown Posse’s Twitter timeline, like a person does, I came across something interesting: Our favorite rap clowns announced a new update to their official smartphone app, which I didn’t even know existed. For the advancement of pop journalism and human knowledge in general, I…
By Brittany Spanos At what point did teen girls suddenly just become wrong? “Serious” music fans seem to have universally accepted a critique of quality that befalls any artist who willingly sells to the rabid teen girl market and stigmatized the fans who dare to sometimes be male or at…
This is a turning point in the history of music on the internet. I know, I know, it feels like a regular Friday, but trust me, things will never be the same again. The forces of capitalism, social networking and goofing off have converged at the perfect time to create…
Rowboat started out as the more acoustic and folk-oriented solo project of Sam McNitt, then the singer and lyricist of Blue Million Miles. With that band, McNitt learned to transform acoustic songs into heady, often aggressive space rock, but his words always seemed to come from a place of refined…
Country music used to have its own distinct identity, one that was tied to rich traditions of lonesome country roads, hard work, low pay and drinking. These days it’s a black hole of insipidity. Following the Grammys, the Lumineers and Mumford & Sons are now reportedly making inroads on country…
Hip-hop is a world unto itself. Its rich tradition of spoken word poetry, self-referential subject matter and electronic and sample-based production make it, in many ways, a difficult musical form to adapt to, especially if you come from a more traditional background. These ten acts helped make rap more accessible…
We’ve got another fresh batch of homegrown hip-hop for you this week, and the cuts we’ve picked will take you through different ends of the spectrum. DJ Cavem brings in a breath of fresh air with his anti-pollution anthem in “Hybrid Lex (I Can’t Breathe the Air),” H*Wood takes you…
Like the quixotically stylish music of his full-time band, Fingers of the Sun, Nathan Brasil’s solo side-project, Salads and Sunbeams, is a warm and accessible, stripped down version of the mustachioed songwriter’s dream-pop style. “It’s a lot of odds and ends that didn’t work with Fingers of the Sun or…
Pitchers and catchers reported this week. You know what that means, right? Yeah, probably nothing. We’re not going to get our hopes up here. I mean, aside from our new skipper, Walt Weiss, a beloved former Rockies shortstop, there’s really no reason to believe this season will be any less…
With a recent chart-topping house banger on Beatport, Israeli producer Asaf Borger, aka Borgore, has a new record on the horizon. Aside from enjoying other recent success with Miley Cyrus on the collaborative chart topper “Decisions,” Borgore is mainly focused on finishing his forthcoming album at an L.A.-based studio when…
Founded in 1985 by a group of teenage friends who had been part of the Bay Area hardcore scene, Neurosis was never just a conventional band. Dabbling in heady ideas and archetypes of the human imagination, Neurosis is one of the most influential metal bands of the last two decades,…
OM first formed when Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius got together a handful of years after their old band Sleep parted ways in the late ’90s. The idea was to create a project that used rhythms to convey meaning in a fashion akin to Tibetan devotional music or Gregorian chants…
Known for a diverse music scene, Memphis, Tennessee has become known for its punk and garage rock scene, thanks to acts like the Oblivions, the Reatards and the bands championed by Goner Records. Ex-Cult came out of that punk world but ended up making the kind of rock and roll…
The Vaccines formed in London in 2010, when Justin Young shelved his solo project, Jay Jay Pistolet, and got together with some friends who had also played gigs with him under his old moniker. The new band came out of punk, and its songs have an undeniably raw energy despite…
So, yeah, I’m watching the Grammys right now and dutifully monitoring the #GRAMMYs hash tag on Twitter (thanks for the helpful reminders, LL). Color me confused. I feel like I just walked into the middle of a movie: On the set, Miranda Lambert and Dierks Bentley are in the middle…
Jai Harris was a poet before she even knew it. Hmm…doesn’t sound as good in the past tense, but in Harris’s case, it really is true. She recalls going to a yard sale with her grandma when she was seven and buying a little book with a poem written on…
Velvet Acid Christ started as an offshoot of Toxic Coma, a project whose strange and unsettling recordings finally saw a wider release last year. Velvet Acid Christ was a decidedly more serious and musical effort rather than an attempt between friends to shock each other and make each other laugh…
