To mark what should have been Broadcast singer Trish Keenan’s 46th birthday this past Sunday, surviving band member James Cargill posted to Soundcloud two 2004 demos the pair made for songs that ended up on their third album, Tender Buttons. If you’re a Broadcast fanatic like me, you already know that unreleased material, especially from the group’s song-based […]
The Juan MacLean has been around for nearly a decade, yet partners John MacLean and Nancy Whang manage to create music that feels altogether now whenever it comes out. John was one of the founders of Six Finger Satellite, a futuristic electronic band that couldn’t have been more ahead of its time in the early 90’s. Their […]
One of the UK’s most celebrated producer-DJs, Jon Hopkins elaborates one dimension of his idiosyncratic techno aesthetic on a new EP of ambient music. “Asleep Versions” dematerializes the visceral textures and decelerates the rhythmic chug of four tracks from his last album, 2013’s Mercury Prize-nominated Immunity. The result is 25 minutes of becalmed, astonishing music, […]
It just so happens that two things I’m wanting to write about are dovetailing perfectly. I listened to John Wesley Coleman III’s new release “The Love That You Own” and was formulating a review in my head that would mention how many genres he playfully mixes together: is it garage rock? R&B? Blues? Pop? Country-ish? […]
I’m dating myself by confessing this, but some of us are still very affected by the vibe carved out on the B-52s’ first two albums: that cool, danceable fusion of sinister beach-guitar twang, kitschy retro styles, and sassy girls-and-guys vocals delivered in deadpan. French group La Femme keep this spirit alive, albeit with some necessary […]
When I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness released their debut album Fear Is On Our Side in 2006, I assumed that they made anguished eyeliner rock in the vein of My Chemical Romance or Thirty Seconds to Mars. And some of those goth elements are there, but as my mother the shrink would say (if she were […]
On the heels of Guided By Voices’ latest breakup comes word that Centro-matic, the Denton, Texas band led by prolific songwriter Will Johnson since 1995, is also going on a possibly-permanent hiatus. Announcing the band’s final tour “for the indefinite and foreseeable future,” Johnson writes: We’ve encountered some successes I wouldn’t have imagined when we […]
The only thing better than a fuzzed-up homage to psychedelic rock is an appropriately trippy accompanying video. Luckily, you’ll get it both and more with “Flying Golem,” the new track from Wand – a four-on-the-floor romping-stomping beat, distortion-drenched guitars punctuated by wailing mini-solos and vocals not too far removed from “Pictures of Matchstick Men.” That’s […]
In case you missed it, Guided by Voices broke up again last week. Here’s what they posted on their Facebook page: Guided By Voices has come to an end. With 4 years of great shows and six killer albums, it was a hell of a comeback run. The remaining shows in the next two months […]
Growing up, I always thought of San Jose as the place where you went for plumbing supplies or muffler repair, not as the spawning ground of a drone & doom & dissonance art-music band that would produce 15 albums (so far) of terrifying explorations into a deeply wounded subconscious. But that’s Xiu Xiu for you, […]