Funeral For A Friend Casually Dressed Ferret By: Eric Greenwood
There are few shticks in rock that I despise more than the oxymoronic sensitive tough guy; it’s just so contrived and played out. (Alex may be on fire and everything, but he’s still a total wuss.) Funeral for a Friend is the Welsh answer to [...]

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Talking Heads The Name Of This Band Is The Talking Heads Rhino By: Eric Greenwood
Despite the accolades for Jonathan Demme’s artsy live document of the Talking Heads’ 1984 tour, Stop Making Sense, this New York quartet has never really been given its due as a live powerhouse. This under-appreciated 1982 live album should rewrite [...]

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Mike Watt The Secondman's Middle Stand Epic By: Eric Greenwood
Whether you agree with his outspoken politics or not, it's hard to begrudge much about anyone as affable as Mike Watt. As the bassist of one of America's most revered punk bands from the early '80s, The Minutemen, Watt will carry the weight of [...]

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The High Water Marks Songs About The Ocean Eenie Meenie By: Eric Greenwood
Just barely too fuzzy to be called twee, The High Water Marks straddle the line between light Elephant 6 psychedelia and the preciousness of pretty much any band on Darla. With The Apples In Stereo drummer Hilarie Sidney moving from behind [...]

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Bjork Medulla Elektra By: Eric Greenwood
Bjork’s phenomenal trajectory has been utterly uncompromising and truly visionary. There's no debating that. On paper, it may look as though Bjork is shunning commerciality and moving forward musically with her gimmicky new album, Medulla, which purports to eschew the use of traditional instrumentation in favor of [...]

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The Cardigans Long Gone Before Daylight Stockholm / Koch By: Eric Greenwood
After the inexplicably lukewarm reception to The Cardigans' 1998 detour into dark, atmospheric trip-hop the band all but disappeared. Vocalist Nina Persson released the country-tinged collaboration with her husband, ex-Shudder To Think guitarist, Nathan Larson, and Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous, entitled, A Camp, [...]

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The Cardigans Long Gone Before Daylight Stockholm/Koch By: Eric Greenwood
After the inexplicably lukewarm reception to The Cardigans' 1998 detour into dark, atmospheric trip-hop the band all but disappeared. Vocalist Nina Persson released the country-tinged collaboration with her husband, ex-Shudder To Think guitarist, Nathan Larson, and Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous, entitled, A Camp, while the [...]

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Eleni Mandell Afternoon Zedtone By: Eric Greenwood
Chances are you've never heard of Eleni Mandell, and I'm recommending that you change that as soon as possible. She may be a singer/songwriter from L.A., but don't hold that against her. She has an impressive pedigree of collaborators and influences, ranging from Tom Waits to [...]

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The Starvations Get Well Soon GSL By: Eric Greenwood
The Starvations may hail from plasticine L.A., but they better represent its seedy underbelly than the phony blond sunshine that colors your prejudice. For six years the band has churned out its anachronistic punk rooted in blues and bar rock angst, producing only two full-lengths [...]

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Fletcher Friends Don't Speak Esperanza Plantation By: Eric Greenwood
Wise beyond its teenage years, Jackson, Mississippi's Fletcher produces a challenging set of gut-wrenching rock played with astute technical precision and a penchant for off-kilter time signatures and unexpected stops and starts. The band goes out of its way to distance itself from all that [...]

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Pretty Girls Make Graves The New Romance Matador By: Eric Greenwood
The opening riff of "Something Bigger, Something Brighter" off the Phil Ek-produced The New Romance recalls the gothic reverberation of Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead", even down to the ominous drumstick click against the side of the snare. When the guitars kick in and [...]

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The 101 The 101 The Self-Starter Foundation By: Michael Jones
Eric Richter possesses one of my favorite voices in modern music and applies said voice to wildly differing projects: Richter's first band, Christie Front Drive, is often heralded as one of the best emo bands that ever existed (editor's note: the irony of the oxymoronic [...]

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