"September girls do so much," goes the opening line on the Big Star classic, and the same could be said of the Irish five-piece taking their name from the song

Of all the bands to emerge in New Zealand in the wake of the punk explosion of the ’70s, The Verlaines may just be the most idiosyncratic

Favorite Albums

1. Ghost Wave, Ages (Flying Nun)
With Ages, Aukland five-piece Ghost Wave proved themselves the heir apparent to the Flying Nun legacy. Like The Clean, Verlaines, Tall Dwarfs, et al. before them, the band combines jangly guitars with pop smarts and VU overdrive. It all amounts to a debut that show the New Zealand label’s best days aren’t behind it.

2. Toy, Join …

It’s that time of year again, when it’s hard to miss the ubiquitous airings of familiar refrains either celebrating the holiday season or

With last year’s self-titled debut, London’s Toy showed the kind of honest to goodness promise that seems more and more rare to hear in these days

Look up the word “provocateur” and you ought to find a picture of Genesis P-Orridge. As leader of industrial pioneers

If you are one of the minions patiently holding your breath until the Sisters of Mercy release a new album, asphyxiation has either already come or is

One thing you learn right off the bat at even the most beginner community college creative writing class is to write what you know. This is a lesson Mrs. Magician

The world is a fucked-up place. This is a fact that I'm reminded of daily by posts on the internet and strange encounters walking the streets of New York

While these days Portland has earned such a reputation as a hipster mecca that it is parodied in mainstream media, there was a time