"The Winter of Mixed Drinks"
Frightened Rabbit
"The Suburbs"
Arcade Fire
"Soundtrack To The End"
Communist Daughter
"Crazy For You"
Best Coast
"Treats"
Sleigh Bells
"Silver Soul"
Beach House
"Little Secrets"
Passion Pit
"Unhinged"
Eels
"Black Smoke"
Tindersticks
We’ve been pretty clear about how we think reviews-by-comparison are lame — we like to throw around big words like “reductive” and “fucking horseshit” — but our disdain holds especially true when the comparisons are just wrong.
So for the record, Listen, Dammit, hereby definitively states that kc quilty is not some reincarnation of grunge. (That [...]
For his last album, 2008’s “A Narrow Way,” Nick Jaina gathered 10 musicians in a studio and recorded all the songs live to tape.
The Portland, Ore., singer and songwriter takes the opposite tack on his new record, “A Bird in the Opera House,” due April 13 on Hush Records. It’s a carefully considered affair, more [...]
Cool bands often come with cool back stories, and the Canadian duo the Pack A.D. is one of them.
Singer and guitarist Becky Black was working in a gas station in East Vancouver, so the story goes, where she met drummer Maya Miller, who declines to say what she was doing (though the pair’s press bio [...]
Few things in life beat a well-constructed pop song, and we’re not talking about hollow Top-40 jams written with mass consumption in mind. We’re talking about songs like “The Winter Stories” by World Atlas.
It’s from the New York band’s self-titled debut, due March 9 on Magic Marker Records. The group started in 2006 as the [...]
There’s more to cool new music than jittery indie-rock. There’s also Dana Falconberry.
The Austin, Texas, singer and songwriter has a captivating voice on songs with a spare, rootsy feel. She cites the influence of, and has been compared to, the likes of Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch, and while there are some surface similarities, Falconberry [...]
Brooklyn rockers the Hold Steady release their fifth album May 4 on Vagrant, the band announced Tuesday morning.
Called “Heaven Is Whenever,” it’s the band’s first record without keyboard player Franz Nicolay (far left) since the Hold Steady’s 2004 debut, “Almost Killed Me.” Nicolay recently left the band to focus on various other projects, inspiring this [...]
After a career based on introversion — six records, few interviews, no live performances — Swedish duo Club 8 is throwing things wide open on its seventh album, aptly titled “The People’s Record.”
Due May 18, their first album since 2007’s “The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Dreaming” features a Cuban percussionist and the unmistakable influence of [...]
Los Angeles in the ’80s was the site of two very different music scenes.
The hardcore punk rock scene that included Black Flag, the Germs, X, Fear and Circle Jerks was famously documented in Penelope Spheeris’ film “The Decline of Western Civilization.” The sequel to that film focused on the glam-metal bands, like Poison, Ratt, Faster [...]
After rigorous analysis, Listen, Dammit, has identified three key ingredients that make the music of Shellshag so darn appealing: stripped-down song structures, startlingly catchy hooks and a vibrant feeling of raw spontaneity, all wrapped in lo-fi sonics and laid upside your head.
It seems so simple, and indeed, each ingredient is common enough on its own. [...]
Few places had indie-rock scenes as vibrant and truly awesome as Chicago did in the ’90s. The Blacks were a part of it for a too-brief period toward the end of the decade before imploding.
Now, after a decade apart, they’re back with a new EP, “In Sickness and Health.”
Formed in the mid-’90s by guitarist Danny [...]
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