Simply reading about Horse Lords could never do their music justice. Given their unusual tuning systems, 20th-century classical reference points, and their band members’ assorted avant-garde credentials, it would be easy to assume that access to the Baltimore-based group is closed off to all…
All the Time is both a breezy bit of oddball dance-pop and a rich record that benefits from deeper listening. While Hamilton, Ontario may not seem like the most fertile ground for cultivating an interest in dance music, the city is actually home to a rather…
Protomartyr’s main draw has always been frontman Joe Casey. With all due respect to Greg Ahee’s wonderfully oblique guitarwork, Casey’s gruff sneer and erudite lyrics are what really set the Detroit post-punk band apart from their contemporaries. He kicks off their latest record, Ultimate…
Shutting Down Here represents a clear advancement of O’Rourke’s familiar ideas and is one of richest sonic achievements. In a recent interview, Jim O’Rourke called his latest work, Shutting Down Here, the “most meaningful” album of his career. “It’s almost 100% exactly what I wanted,”…
Homegrown is the rare archival release that actually offers substance rather than just ephemera. In an age where exhuming stacks of demos and alternate mixes has become the norm for so many older acts, Neil Young’s Homegrown — a scrapped studio album from 1975 —…
For a band so insistent on defying any and all principles of behavior, even (or perhaps especially) when it meant sabotaging their own success, it’s perfectly fitting that the Replacements’ best and most quintessential album bears a title so openly flippant in its disregard…
Brian Eno will always be best known for his invention of ambient music (or at least its coinage) and for his work as the producer extraordinaire behind such classics as Remain In Light, The Joshua Tree, and Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy, but the avant garde,…
The first image of Agnes Varda’s 1965 film Le Bonheur (meaning “happiness” in English) is that of a yellow sunflower beaming in the radiant light of a perfect summer day. As the opening credits appear on-screen, we cut to another similarly-situated sunflower, and then to…
It’s somewhat curious that Guided By Voices has so comfortably settled into its position on the Mount Rushmore of ’90s indie rock. That their brand of junky, compressed pop songs resonated with the slackers in Archers of Loaf T-shirts is hardly a surprise, but…
