The kids in Menace Beach remind us of the essential elements of British alt-rock: punk’s spirited amateurism, a laser-like focus on pop hooks, fluency in the semiotics of guitar-bass-drums, and the good sense to keep things simple. Their new album Lemon Memory goes down like a sweet confection, ten remarkably consistent tracks digestible by even […]
The guru of garage rock is back with a new album so killer, and so central to his artistic agenda, that it merits the eponymous distinction. Behold: Ty Segall. I’m guessing it doesn’t help to describe it as a “high octane shredfest,” since those terms pretty much apply to any Segall record. So what kind […]
It does my heart good to see that Washington, DC still plays for keeps with guitar-bass-drums punk created in an independently produced, communally minded context. The scene’s legendary DIY tradition — think Bad Brains and Minor Threat of the 1980s, and Fugazi, Bikini Kill, and Nation of Ulysses in the 1990s — may seem quaint […]
It’s easy to fall under the spell of Cate Le Bon. When you listen to the breezy, loopy “Rock Pool,” try closing your eyes tightly enough to trigger the fireworks show on your eyelids, and you can just about picture Le Bon as an “it girl” from some mythical North Atlantic country where pilly wool […]
Someone forgot to tell Australia that indie rock is supposed to be artistically spent by now, because in Melbourne they’re partying like it’s 1995. The city seems flush with musicians who introduce a fresh perspective (ideally while very high) to this by-now classic style. Melbourne is also witnessing a new cohort of charismatic frontwomen; as […]
What were the best records of 2016? Leonard Nevarez is here to tell you! 1. David Bowie – Blackstar It was released on a Friday in January, and by Sunday he was gone. Backed by his most adventurous music in decades, the starman delivered a eulogy for himself and a lament for the condition of […]
And now we venture out to the farthest reaches of Rocktober with the straight-up heavy metal of Sumerlands. None of thrash metal’s punk instincts or black metal’s cultivated misanthropy here for the fence-sitters to fall back on — just the purest, Ozzy Ozzbourne Bark At The Moon-inspired anthems courtesy of a Philadelphia-based group who, by […]
Another Rocktober scene: Two men approach the stage in a tawdry nightclub called Bandcamp, their grizzled, unpreened appearance a cloak of invisibility to the trendy patrons. Only as the PA goes silent does the crowd notice one of the duo opening a guitar case with a Deep Purple sticker. “No classic rock!!” the cry goes […]
Axis: Sova arrives on the scene to settle a score only late 70s/early 80s rockers thought unsettled. Namely, is there only one way to rock — as Sammy Hagar famously declared, to “crank up the drums, crank out the bass/Crank up my Les Paul in your face”? Rising to the Van Halen usurper’s challenge, the […]
Some of the imagery conjured by Loch Lomond: a lone figure in the distance, dwarfed by a soaring mountain horizon. The knowing wink of a cabaret singer performing in a dingy canteen. The international esprit de corps of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, who fought the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. A weathered photo of […]