Unwound Leaves Turn Inside You Kill Rock Stars By: Eric Greenwood
Unwound is finally back, but you may not recognize the sound. The trio's seventh album is far and away its most ambitious and musically diverse. The departure is immediately obvious. Where past albums like New Plastic Ideas and Repetition balanced odd syncopation [...]

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Rocket From The Crypt Group Sounds Vagrant By: Eric Greenwood
Ten years after its aggressive debut, Paint As A Fragrance, Rocket From The Crypt is still churning out a raucous blend of fifties rock and roll, garage punk, and rockabilly guitar machismo complete with inter-stellar horns. The band may have been through a [...]

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Ladytron 604 Emperor Norton By: Patrick Doherty
You knew it was just a matter of time before someone would try to cross icy new-wave with Japanese electro-pop and German isolationism, but who would have thought it would sound like this? Ladytron punches giant holes in the stereotype of new new-wavers as self-referential nerds [...]

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Scannerfunk Wave Of Light By Wave Of Light Sulphur/beggars Banquet By: Eric Greenwood
Scanner (a.k.a. Robin Rimbaud) abandons his digital voyeurism and phone-scanning fetish long enough to create his first genuinely accessible dance album. His prolific output in the 1990's was comprised mostly of intercepted snippets of phone conversations backed by sparse electronics [...]

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The Gossip That's Not What I Heard Kill Rock Stars By: Brooke McDermott
If you caught The Gossip’s opening act for indie darlings Sleater-Kinney last year, then, of course, you’ve been eagerly awaiting the band’s full-length debut. The big question is whether the lead singer’s hip-shaking, hand clapping, and crowd pleasing stage show [...]

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Pixies Complete 'b' Sides 4ad By: Eric Greenwood
Even though this compilation doesn't rival any of the Pixies' classic studio albums, it is still essential listening. The Pixies all-too-brief career unwittingly followed Devo's philosophy (prophesy?) of de-evolution in that every release was just a little bit worse than the one before it. [...]

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Fiel Garvie Vuka Vuka Noisebox By: Eric Greenwood
If Kate Bush had an evil twin she might sound like Anne Reekie- emotionally disturbed and angry but still very feminine. The nervous quiver Reekie intones could easily frighten small children. Her vocals refuse to blend with the dark, atmospheric rock that her band [...]

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Finley Quaye Vanguard Epic By: Eric Greenwood
When your claim to fame is spreading a rumor that Tricky is your cousin, you're off to a pretty pitiful start. Not to mention the fact that the "star" you claim to be related to can't deny said rumor any more vehemently. Granted, Quaye got [...]

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Gwenmars Driving A Million Seethru Broadcasting By: Eric Greenwood
I wonder if David Bowie regrets the whole Ziggy Stardust/glam thing when he hears how it's been whittled down over the years? Probably not. It's no skin off his millions. Dime a dozen LA bands like Gwenmars beg the question, though. [...]

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Holland Drums Pulcec By: Eric Greenwood
Trevor Kampmann's brand of saturated electro-pop is hard not to like. Layers of concurrent melodies glide over pulsating, seemingly wet rhythm tracks while Kampmann sings sexually provocative lyrics with a voice that paradoxically sounds both innocent and sensual. As the much sought after producer of albums [...]

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