It’s tempting to call Spoon’s latest, Lucifer on the Sofa (Matador Records), a return to form, but aside from a couple of mediocre albums midway through their

A year ago, when looking back on 2020, it seemed like things could only get better. Hell, they couldn’t get any worse, right? And for a while, things did get better in 2021. Optimism spilled forth as COVID-19 vaccines become available. For a moment, it seemed like things might return to “normal.” Public gatherings — most importantly, shows — returned. But with Trumpian anti-vaxxers in …

It’s been nearly 30 years since It’s a Shame About Ray launched The Lemonheads into alt-rock stardom and their frontman, Evan

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Forming in Perth, Australia in 1978 and operating for just shy of 10 years in a series of fits and starts accompanied by line-up and locale changes, the Scientists nevertheless carved out a distinct place for themselves in the punk pantheon. From the band’s initial slabs of garage pop to the primal swamp rock of the band’s primary line-up to the rock deconstruction of its …

As much as music has always meant to me, I’ve never been one to get too emotional over the passings of the people who make it. (Unless, it’s someone I

When Arab Strap disbanded in 2006 after playing a series of farewell shows, it appeared to be the last we would ever hear from the Scottish duo. Sure, singer Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton would resurface as solo artists making records under their birth names and other guises, but such endeavors seemed like only added nails to the coffin.

Moffat and Middleton had emerged as …

Someone once said that suffering breeds great art, but I wonder what they would have made of a year spent dealing with a global pandemic. For 20 years

To put it bluntly, 2020 can suck it. There have been few years that have been so catastrophic to so many people as this past year. If the coronavirus pandemic and the hell that it wrought weren’t enough, we also had to endure police brutality of an unprecedented level and the trashfire that occupied the White House and threatened to undermine our democratic process this …

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