You’d be forgiven for thinking of Haircut 100 as a new wave one-hit wonder. While their debut album, 1982’s Pelican West, produced four top 10 singles in their UK homeland, in the States, only “Love Plus One” cracked the top 40. While the band did release a second album, Paint and Paint in 1984, it was recorded after singer/guitarist and principal songwriter Nick Heyward …

The last time we reviewed Wet Leg live, the occasion was a show at a Columbus venue that held just 400 people. So seeing the

For those interested in the noisier end of the rock & roll spectrum, Jon Spencer needs no introduction. As the leader of rock deconstructionists Pussy Galore and frontman and namesake for the decidedly groovier but no less incendiary Blues Explosion, as well as a sideman with the Gibson Bros, Honeymoon Killers, and wife Cristina Martinez’s Boss Hog, among others, he’s had a …

For anyone familiar with the five albums The Twilight Sad has made to date, it would probably come as no surprise to hear their new one is a bit dark and

We first caught wind of Chicago’s Brigitte Calls Me Baby when they released their debut EP, This House Is Made of Corners, in 2023. It took just the record’s five songs to be smitten with the band’s mix of infectious melodies, hepped-up riffs, and singer Wes Leavins’ dreamy croon. They hearkened back to ‘50s leading lights like Roy Orbison and the King himself while …

This year, REM’s Lifes Rich Pageant is turning 40. At the time of its release, the seminal record was a bellwether of the burgeoning underground

It’s tempting to compare Cork five-piece Cardinals to Irish luminaries like The Pogues, given the healthy doses of accordion that highlight the band’s Irish

No matter the context, it’s hard not to look back at 2025 as the year that orange asshole returned to the presidency and started making everything awful. We can only hope that he will eventually be made to answer for the atrocities we all know he has committed. In the meantime, music has been more important than ever as a place of solace and as …

On their first tour since splitting up in 2004, The Beta Band touched down in Boston late last month. It was hard to know what to expect from the

Playing their first gig on New Year’s Eve 1982, The Bats became part of the vanguard of New Zealand bands to bring attention to the country’s underground music scene during that decade. Their manically strummed guitars, mid-fi aesthetics, and frenetic pop hooks came to epitomize the Dunedin Sound being championed by Flying Nun Records, the band’s label home.

Some 40 years later, The Bats are …