Mogwai Mr. Beast Matador By: Eric Greenwood
Mogwai's crash course in post-rock noise is a blistering jolt even to the most jaded of ears. On its fifth album, Mr. Beast, the band sounds singularly focused on re-discovering its dynamic roots, adding subtle flourishes along the way to avoid any self-referential mockery, and the result [...]

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Talking Heads Talking Heads Brick Rhino By: Eric Greenwood
The more time that passes the larger the legacy of the Talking Heads looms. This band of RISD art school geeks changed the face of pop music forever. And not just musically, either. The Talking Heads revolutionized the music video format even before [...]

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The Sounds Dying To Say This To You New Line Records By: Eric Greenwood
The Hives are to The Rolling Stones as The Sounds are to Blondie- not exactly replicas, but the level of influence is perfectly obvious in less substantive ways. The Sounds dress themselves like new wave punks, too, which means calculatedly [...]

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Stereolab Fab Four Suture Too Pure By: Eric Greenwood
Every time Stereolab releases an album, the same arguments and justifications are bandied about, all of which revolve around the complaint that each new Stereolab album sounds exactly like the last one. It's an ignorant assertion, but it's easy to understand why it's become an [...]

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David Gilmour On An Island Sony By: Eric Greenwood
Following the reverently elegiac reunion of Pink Floyd with Roger Waters at last summer's Live 8 benefit, (which incidentally sparked an increase in Pink Floyd's album sales by 3000%!), guitarist David Gilmour has released his third solo record, On an Island. It's been 22 years [...]

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Voxtrot Raised By Wolves Cult Hero Records By: Michael Jones
You can certainly add Voxtrot to that ever-growing list of intriguing Texas bands. This quintet from Austin defies easy categorization. Its press release throws about all sorts of comparisons, and most of them seem fair enough: Gang of Four, The Smiths, early R.E.M., and Belle [...]

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Elvis Costello Live With The Metropole Orkest My Flame Burns Blue Deutsche Grammophon By: Eric Greenwood
In nearly thirty years of making records, Elvis Costello has never released a proper live album. Fanatics know that Live at El Mocambo doesn't count because it was only released as a promotional item back in 1978 (and [...]

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Meredith Bragg + The Terminals The Departures EP The Kora Records By: Kerry M
Ben Gibbard had better watch his back. For better or worse, Meredith Bragg & The Terminals clearly have him and his Death Cab Postal Service in their sights. Following closely on the heels of their well-received debut, Volume 1, [...]

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The Strokes First Impressions Of Earth RCA By: Eric Greenwood
As derivative as Is This It was, The Strokes still managed to define themselves on their own terms. To this day, the haters lash out at the band as venomously as they did in the beginning, citing everything from the band's privileged background to [...]

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Top 20 Albums Of The Year 2005 Various By: Eric Greenwood
1. Bloc Party, Silent Alarm (Vice)
I didn’t want to like this record as much as I did because the whole art school, post-punk, Gang of Four rip-off guitar show has grown hackneyed, but the melodies stick with you and mean [...]

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