While the music of the ’80s is often disparaged for the plasticity and seeming lack of soul that characterized its most extreme new wave caricatures, the truth is it was a time of top-notch pop and great experimentation, particularly in the realm of electronic instrumentation. Book of Love, a New York–based quartet that formed in 1983, melded the two along with a certain amount of …

While it would be easy to dismiss this double-bill of openers as a cash-grab at ’80s nostalgia—and perhaps that is exactly what

In the accepted pantheon of punk (or whatever you want to call it), figureheads in New York, London, and L.A. are revered as the innovators of this nefarious genre. But running concurrently and almost continuously alongside the fashionable faces of “underground” music, Pere Ubu has existed as a true alternative. Metabolized out of the remains of Rocket from the Tombs, this innovative group first made …

The Hunches surfaced in the waking years of this century to hit a nerve that desperately needed hitting. Playing a cacophonic, gritty kind of rock & roll, they

Hitting their stride in the late ’90s, Scottish four-piece Travis is often depicted as the first of a new wave of British bands to follow once the fervor surrounding Brit-pop earlier in the decade had died and left a lull in its wake. But while they may have shared some of their peers’ penchant for instantly fetching melodies, the band separated itself from the pack …

If you didn’t know better, it would probably be safe to assume, judging from the title, that the new solo album from Daniel Ash is a mellow, stripped-down

A New Jersey indie rock supergroup of sorts, East of Venus had been in existence for the past decade, but it wasn’t until last year that the band finally got around

There are countless tales of rock & roll dreams busted by excessive indulgences, personal ghosts, and/or muddied relationships. But while there are tragedies

As Jonathan Richman’s career has extended into its fourth decade, new albums from the singer-songwriter have grown increasingly ancillary. Even when the

When thinking of the music of the ’80s, most people probably envision some extreme version of new wave squeaked out of synthesizers by a band