Both as a member of Welsh psych-pop hooligans Super Furry Animals and as a solo artist, Gruff Rhys has always combined innate songwriting smarts with a certain curiosity and exploratory nature as well as hereditary pride. In both instances, he’s sung in both his native tongue and English, creating a songbook inherently catchy even when you can’t understand a word he’s singing. No stranger to …
As the bass player in both Joy Divison and New Order, Peter Hook has been at the center of two of the most distinctive and influential bands to follow in the wake of punk rock. As he details in his recent book, Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division, that infamously short-lived band formed as a direct result of seeing the Sex Pistols and took up …
Like much of a certain portion of my generation, the early ’90s signify an era of music marked by shimmering melodies blurred by swathes of
In the six years we’ve been publishing The Agit Reader, we’ve watched Nika Roza Danilova (a.k.a. Zola Jesus) develop from a dilettante
With an iconoclastic artist like Leonard Cohen, a new album is almost irrelevant. Possessing a lengthy discography of records filled with the kind of religious
As it turns out, Bryan Ferry’s concert at the Beacon Theater on Wednesday was particularly special. The former Roxy Music
With its day-glo fashions, big hair, and imbibing in excesses of all sorts, the ’80s are an easy target for derision. But those traits
Since tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II on
Saturday Night Live some 20 years ago, Sinead O’Connor has been known as much for her divisive
Not unlike the trajectory of many bands before and after them, Spoon’s rise in popularity over the past decade has been inversely proportionate to
Between the mediocrity of the records he made while in decline and the overshadowing notoriety that comes from an early death, the music that
