March 23rd, 2026 | by Stephen Slaybaugh | published in Features | Leave A Comment »
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 …
February 11th, 2026 | by Stephen Slaybaugh | published in Features | Leave A Comment »
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 …
October 27th, 2025 | by Stephen Slaybaugh | published in Features | Leave A Comment »
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 …
March 31st, 2025 | by Stephen Slaybaugh | published in Features | Leave A Comment »
If it seems like it’s been a long time since we last heard from Sacred Paws, that may be because it feels like we’re now living in another time from when the Scottish duo last released a record. (Although, unfortunately, there are some alarming similarities). When the band’s sophomore album, Run Around the Sun, came out in May 2019, we were still existing in …
June 14th, 2024 | by Kevin J. Ellliott | published in Features | Leave A Comment »
It’s telling that Horsegirl’s 2022 debut, Versions of Modern Performance (Matador Records), is still in my “new” pile. It’s a grower. It’s a legitimate piece of art. And in many ways, it stands as a harbinger of a new Chicago sound that has since brought about a wave of young bands (Friko, Lifeguard, Post Office Winter) in Horsegirl’s wake.
At the time of the album’s …
April 4th, 2024 | by Stephen Slaybaugh | published in Features | Leave A Comment »
It’s hard to think of a band in the last 40 years that has been more incendiary than The Jesus and Mary Chain. After making their way from East Kilbride (Scotland) to London, they became infamous for gigs that often ended in riots. However, it was their music that was truly arresting. After first putting out a single on the legendary Creation label, they released …
March 20th, 2023 | by Stephen Slaybaugh | published in Features | Leave A Comment »
Since teaming up in 2009, vocalist Jason Williamson and musical brain trust Andrew Fearn, a.k.a. Sleaford Mods, have carved out their own niche. Theirs is an idiosyncratic mix of grimy hip-hop and electronic post-punk minimalism laced with invective lyrics that touch on such subjects as class, politics, musical voyeurism, and personal relations. Recorded during the pandemic times of 2021, the band’s eighth album (if you …
July 10th, 2022 | by Kevin J. Ellliott | published in Features | Leave A Comment »
Martin Fry, the voice and sole remaining member of ABC, is a man of no regrets. The affected schmaltz, the gold lamé suits, the saxophones, and the earnest odes to Motown were all parts of the grand design envisioned when the group evolved out of Vice Versa in 1981. While Vice Versa featured minimal electronics and obtuse lyrics in keeping with other Sheffield bands of …
April 15th, 2022 | by Stephen Slaybaugh | published in Features | Leave A Comment »
Although she had been a member of goth-leaning Bay area outfit Crimson Scarlet and some even more obscure anarcho-punk bands, Riki (a.k.a. Niff Nawor) appeared virtually out of nowhere in 2020 with her self-titled debut on the esteemed Dais label. One of our favorites that year, it mixed a bevy of synth pioneer influences with a touch of the ethereal and Riki’s equally enigmatic …
July 20th, 2021 | by Stephen Slaybaugh | published in Features | Leave A Comment »
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 …