Danielson Ships Secretly Canadian By: Eric Greenwood
With a shrill, pixie-stick blurt to his uneven and deliberately jagged cadence, Daniel Smith resembles the Pixies' Black Francis on crack- two octaves higher and even more erratic. It's an undeniably acquired vocal style, which, coupled with his penchant for wildly eccentric instrumentation and wide-eyed innocence, can make [...]

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The Knife Silent Shout Mute By: Kerry M
On this, the third record from Sweden's sibling duo The Knife, we find Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Andersson delivering another dose of their signature synthladen eurotrash pop cacophony. Karin's processed vocals often channel a sort of strung-out and carbonite encrusted Kate Bush while icy, Spector-like walls [...]

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The Jesus And Mary Chain Psychocandy; Darklands; Automatic; Honey's Dead; Stoned Rhino By: Eric Greenwood
If you only know three chords, play them loudly. The Jesus and Mary Chain took this axiom and turned it on its head. With a cache of predictable influences, Scottish brothers Jim and William Reid turned underground music into a [...]

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Sonic Youth Rather Ripped Geffen By: Eric Greenwood
As strange as it may seem, the first few notes of "Reena", the opening track of Sonic Youth's 14th album, Rather Ripped, sound like Belle & Sebastian. Has Sonic Youth gone twee? Well, no, not really, but it has put out its most concise, stripped down, [...]

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Regina Spektor Begin To Hope Sire By: Eric Greenwood
Regina Spektor isn't just another in an endless line of quirky female singer-songwriters with classical training; she adds Russian Jew from New York City to the formula, which may or may not scare you away. Her penchant for hyperbolic melancholy and fairy tale whimsy easily invites [...]

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Thom Yorke The Eraser XL By: Eric Greenwood
It's easy to assume that Thom Yorke pulls most of the strings in Radiohead. He's the singer, ergo, the focal point, and he plays guitar. It's a fair assumption. But one listen to The Eraser, and it's clear that his influence extends only so [...]

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Murder By Death In Bocca Al Lupo Tent Show By: Eric Greenwood
On its second album, Who Will Survive and What Will Be Left of Them? (a title knicked from a Texas Chainsaw Massacre promotional movie poster), Bloomington, Indiana's Murder By Death weaved a thematic story of the devil's infiltration of a small Mexican town [...]

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Anakrid Father Stereonucleosis By: Eric Greenwood
Since the unexpected demise of Newgenics (a heavily-hyped, short-lived amalgamation of notable local musicians that put out one seven-inch on Level Plane Records), Columbia, South Carolina's Chris Bickel has kept a low profile. Well, low for Chris Bickel. Bickel still has a weekly karaoke stint, Mr. B's Goodtime Karaoke [...]

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The Replacements Don't You Know Who I Think I Was? The Best Of The Replacements Rhino By: Eric Greenwood
The Replacements just couldn't get it right. The punks wrote them off as nothing more than a drunken bar band, while the drunks in bars wrote them off as drunken punks. Nobody would claim them except [...]

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30 Seconds To Mars A Beautiful Lie Virgin By: Eric Greenwood
Jared Leto is good at one thing: looking like a sullen, androgynous golem. Ok, ok, two things: the androgynous golem thing and looking believable when his face has been pulverized, as it was in Fight Club. Leto's claim to fame is still [...]

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Gnarles Barkley St. Elsewhere Downtown By: Eric Greenwood
Calling Gnarles Barkley hip-hop is a pretty uninformed cop-out. This album is so scattered and diverse that it makes pigeon-holing this unlikely duo, comprised of mash-up sample master Danger Mouse and Goodie Mob crooner Cee-Lo, into any genre subset more than just a little difficult.
With Danger [...]

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Mission Of Burma The Obliterati Matador By: Eric Greenwood
Mission of Burma just makes all the imitators sound silly. I simply can't get over how good this record is. When the band returned in 2004 with Onoffon, over two decades after disbanding due to guitarist Roger Miller's hearing loss, I was justifiably skeptical of its [...]

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The Raconteurs Broken Boy Soldiers V2 By: Eric Greenwood
Jack White's teaming up with power-pop soloist Brendan Benson and the rhythm section of the Greenhornes hardly constitutes a "supergroup" in my book, but, perhaps, that is more a testament to White's gigantic rock star stature than it is a reflection on the current state of [...]

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The Walkmen A Hundred Miles Off Record Collection By: Eric Greenwood
Not a band to embrace stagnation, New York City's The Walkmen reacts drastically to the overwhelming praise bestowed upon its second album, Bows + Arrows, with a confident step out of the murky shadows and into a brighter, more aggressive domain without sacrificing its [...]

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Jose Gonzalez Live At Bimbo's 365 San Francisco, CA - 6/17/06 By: Kerry M
Three years after the initial release in Europe, Mr. Gonzalez is touring the US in support of his recently re-released debut album, Veneer. The name Jose Gonzalez may not be well known around these parts, but thanks to a clever [...]

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Be Your Own Pet Summer Sensation Ecstatic Peace! By: Eric Greenwood
Typically, when the UK press seizes upon a new band, it screeches all sorts of hyperbolic nonsense so loud and so often that by the time the latest "It" band hits our shores, deaf ears greet it together with a collective, anti-climactic yawn. [...]

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They Might Be Giants Venue Songs Idlewild By: Kerry M
I can still vividly recall my first introduction to the two Johns. I was at most 16 and she was most definitely in college. We were in her car running an errand for our employer and this curious song began banging from her [...]

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The Stills Without Feathers Vice By: Eric Greenwood
Cashing in on the Interpol bubble with an album so hermetically sealed in '80's alternative goth-lite, The Stills immediately polarized itself amidst a very critical underground. The stylish gloom, which obviously borrowed heavily from both The Cure and The Smiths, managed to resonate beyond mere idolatry, [...]

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Editors The Back Room Fader By: Eric Greenwood
Instead of copping the nostalgic style of its post-punk, early '80's forbearers, Editors choose simply to imitate as blatantly as possible. I suppose, for anyone who didn't grow up on Joy Division or Echo & the Bunnymen, Editors would sound refreshingly inventive amidst the more commercial fringes [...]

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Morrissey Ringleader Of The Tormentors Attack! By: Eric Greenwood
Morrissey has made his name by acting like a high maintenance drama queen for two decades now. He's cultivated his hyperbolic, schoolgirl viciousness to such a shrill degree that it's hard to be shocked any more. With 2004's You Are the Quarry, Morrissey ended [...]

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