It took an Australian label to bring back the early recordings of a New York band that thrived in the ’70s and ’80s punk scene and yet was never really of it. The Fleshtones—unlike many other garage revivalists—were not interested in finding common ground between decades or in creating a “pure” authenticity. They had to […]
F.J. McMahon’s exhausted yet intense murmur was not bred in ’60s folk clubs but in Vietnam, where his tour of duty did not inspire him to write songs boiling with rage. Singing as if from a distant dimension surrounded only by discreet drums and dual guitars, McMahon instead recreates the state of mind of a […]
Popular music in America seldom gives space to the kind of working men who left the textile mill of Gaston County, North Carolina, between 1927 and 1931 to record the kind of laughter made to keep them from crying over too little pay and too much work. This kind of humor—supported with guitars and banjos […]
Come on, feel The Feelies Their big glasses, casual wear and New Jersey suburban pale faces didn’t conform to the usual images of rock saviors who strutted and spat their way across the postpunk stages of 1980, but the Feelies nonetheless had as great an influence on the future of alternative rock. Their sotte voce […]
It becomes clear after listening to these demos, live cuts and auditions why Moby Grape was different from the hippie bands of San Francisco and Los Angeles. They were rock and pop purists still imbued with a raucous sock hop/surf fever amped until their rough licks also propelled them into a future of Big […]
On Middle Cyclone, Neko Case refines and deepens lessons learned from country, the singer/songwriter tradition and the off-center pop art of her sometimes band, the New Pornographers. With a terseness that nonetheless gives room for metaphor explorations and her discreetly eloquent musicians, Case twists the usually sleepy singer/songwriter style, lacing its romance with verbal timebombs […]
Often, roots music like the a cappella gospel found on Como Now is approvingly described as raw, when in reality its perfect pitch and apt use of harmony could be more accurately categorized as sophistication that takes risks. The various soloists and ensembles of Mount Mariah Church push their voices to ragged extremes to make […]
This economically priced collection of Big Dipper’s indie works give us even more proof of the wealth of left field music made between punk and Nirvana. Born from the ashes of Volcano Suns and The Embarrassment, Big Dipper crafted albums steeped in the slashing guitars and hoarse panic of a garage punk that they knocked […]
As proudly goofy members of the punk-pop church, the Black Kids have neither profound gloom nor shocking musical innovations to impress the sort of hipsters mildly amused by musicians supporting their tales of temporary passion with big beats, old-style synthesizers and background singers echoing their leader with deadpan sarcasm. Rather, the Kids’ sarcasm is a […]
Although best known for supplying the sample beat for Grandmaster Flash’s “White Lines (Don’t Do It),” downtown New Yorkers Liquid Liquid left behind a catalog that deserves as much praise as that seminal rap hit. Like “Sex Machine”-era James Brown, Liquid were determined to melt rhythm down to its purest essence. Unlike the funk showman, […]