Depeche Mode has signed a new record deal for its forthcoming album due out in March of next year. Columbia Records will release the as-yet-untitled album, which primary songwriter Martin Gore – in a message on the band’s website – describes as having “similar vibe to Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion.” I’m down […]

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I still remember the very first time I heard Blank Wave Arcade. It was in the Fall of 1999. We had received it as a promo for review. Eric knew right away that I would love it. And fall in love I did. 13 years later it is still one of my all-time favorite albums, […]

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I have no idea how this slipped through the cracks this year, but I’m looking forward to listening to it on repeat until the end of the year.

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Queens of the Stone Age has finally (just about) reassembled the group that made Songs for the Deaf, its last truly great record, which is somehow a decade old now. Dave Grohl is back playing drums on the album, and long-banned bassist Nick Oliveri has been allowed to re-enter Josh Homme’s sanctuary to lay down some […]

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Fiona Apple’s re-emergence every half decade or so is a triumphant celebration for a niche community of devotees and rather an apathetic shrug for the rest of America, which assumes (wrongly) that she’s just a Lilith Fair throwback, trying to claw her way back into the limelight. I belong to the former group, as my […]

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Ugh, my day is ruined. My love for Shiner is not understood by many. This is a band that people either love with an obsessiveness that knows no bounds or they simply do not get at all. Not only did Shiner reissue a remastered version of The Egg (on vinyl for the first time) without […]

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Going to Unwound shows was a once-a-year given/religious experience for me between the years 1994 and 1998. I saw the band every single time it came within 600 miles of wherever I was. Sometimes multiple times. To say that I was a fan is a gross understatement. Back then bands released records every year and then […]

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