Sammy Beam of Iron and Wine offers up one of the most uninformative and inane interviews I’ve ever read with The Onion’s AV Club. Dude sounds like Alberto Gonzales. In response to the films he’s allowed his music to be featured in, Beam either doesn’t know or hasn’t seen anything the interviewer brings up. Does [...]

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A Canadian news outlet reports Sony BMG has partnered with music retailer HMV on an unusual promotion to try and secure Bruce Springsteen’s forthcoming Magic a No. 1 spot on the Nielsen SoundScan charts in Canada: “HMV is offering purchasers of the album a free video and ringtone download of Magic’s first single, ‘Radio Nowhere,’ [...]

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Why the name Tom Ewing isn’t any bigger than it currently is is beyond me. His ongoing piece for Brit blog Freaky Trigger – in which he has endeavored to review, with a pretty good semblance of success, every Number One Hit in the UK since 1952 – has occupied more of my leisure time [...]

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It honestly doesn’t sound too bad until the flat back-up vocals kick in, thanks to the fat, awkward teenager with less than zero stage presence. This ought to make Michael Anthony crack a smile…

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One of the better songs off QOTSA’s uneven but still decent Era Vulgaris features a campy sexploitation video in homage of Tarantino’s unfathomably under-appreciated Death Proof, which just came out on DVD. The QOTSA video stars four bra and panty-clad, knife-wielding, bi-curious sluts, I mean, ‘Hell Kittens on the Run.’ I can’t imagine what video [...]

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Bright Eyes performed “Four Winds” on Jay Leno last night. I’d forgotten how painful it was to sit through Jay Leno, awaiting a musical guest. He’s still ripping off Howard Stern in the un-funniest possible ways. It’s also still somewhat surreal for me to watch indie rock bands on The Tonight Show. I know Bright [...]

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This documentary is based on 25 hours of audio-taped interviews conducted by noted Cobain biographer Michael Azerrad, who also wrote the American post-punk, pre-grunge, underground rock history tome, Our Band Could Be Your Life. 25 hours of audio-taped interviews given to one person? Jesus. From the looks of the trailer, it’s likely this film will [...]

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Somewhere along the fallibility continuum of the American justice system – closer to the Rosenberg commies than those anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti – now lies that weird little gun-toting, Jewish kid from the Bronx known as Harvey Phillip Spector. Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler (who apparently has received some poetically disturbing death threats as [...]

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With the pitch-shifting, futuristic melodies and the oddball techno stomp of its debut, Mirrored, Battles has pushed itself to the forefront of the experimental elite. The first single, “Atlas” showcased the band’s bag of complex wizardry with an unforeseen vocal melody over top a danceable backbeat, squawking, processed guitar jabs and rigid keyboard noodlings. [...]

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Mental Floss serves up a mostly predictable tally of “23 Album Covers That Changed Everything.” Why 23 and not 20 or 25? How the shit should I know? It’s not important. I mean, the burning man on the cover of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here really was on fire for chrissakes. Damn.
Meanwhile, the mother [...]

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While rock ‘n’ roll purists (i.e. geezers) genuflect at the altar of the blues, I find the genre to be formulaic and by and large dull.
Let me qualify by saying I don’t mind when bands (e.g. The White Stripes or The Black Keys) frame their music within the blues’ traditional context, but too many times [...]

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I understand the desire to move forward as a band, so if you’re going to try to be around for multiple decades it only makes sense to experiment wildly. I just don’t know that the transparent use of a flavor-of-the-month producer is the way to go. Madonna hops on the whatever’s hot train every time [...]

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Since the Drawer here has recently become the judge, jury and foremost executioner for those seemingly good bands that do very bad things, the evil puppy-kicking corporate conglomerates can add a José González notch on their handcrafted by an eight-year-old in dank Singapore cellar belts with this one. To their collective credits, I really didn’t [...]

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Music’s a lot like syphilis and movies where Scarlett Johansson doesn’t flash her gash – there’s way too much of it in the world today. (By the way, hey Google, when I type “scarlet johansen naked” that’s precisely what I mean: Scarlett. Johansson. Naked. It’s not a suggestion. Don’t be giving me see-through wet bikini [...]

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A friend of mine visited Canada some years ago, and his recount of that trip left me with the impression that our neighbors to the north were freaks for Rod Stewart, Dairy Queen and ketchup-flavored potato chips.
Granted, that was before The Arcade Fire’s Funeral had become a requirement for your hipster merit badge or before [...]

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Is it me, or has Beck been listening to a lot of LCD Soundsystem? Cool fan-made video, though, for Beck’s strange, one-off-no-new-album-plans single.

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Those who suck at Guitar Hero may have cause to rejoice with the news that the Sex Pistols have re-recorded their quintessential hit “Anarchy in the UK” for inclusion in the third installment of the video game series. Sloppy punk should be a bit easier than the typical metal fare. Evidently, the band’s record company [...]

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If you didn’t know all along that George Michael was gay, you’re gay. I mean, come on, have you seen the video for Wham’s “Wake Me Up before You Go Go?” That was the biggest coming out party I’ve ever seen. Some people still pretended to act surprised when Michael finally admitted he preferred [...]

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Replacements legend Paul Westerberg is healing slowly after gouging his hand with a screwdriver while attempting to remove wax from a candle. It’s kind of a random way to mess up your hand but fitting for a man whose whole career has been on the unpredictable side. Westerberg recently appeared on The Craft , which [...]

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The Depeche Mode frontman’s second solo record is due out October 23 on Virgin. It’s nearly impossible for Gahan to shake the Depeche Mode footprint, especially when his solo work mines similar electronic terrain to the mothership. His commanding baritone has always been his bread and butter, but his songwriting is improving by leaps and [...]

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