Music In Review

Epic. It may be the best word to describe musician, interpreter and composer Nels Cline. Even though Cline, in his 50s, has finally received a wider recognition after joining Wilco, the guitarist has hardly rested on his laurels. If anything, he has multiplied them. His output and dedication to his true roots — contemporary, experimental […]

I must admit that I was led astray in initially dismissing Grinderman as a vehicle for Nick Cave to somehow recapture and upgrade the barrage of cacophony he created with his first band, The Birthday Party. It was more than that, I discovered. Rather than simply a side project, Grinderman has become an extension of […]

Rooted in a mixture of 1960s bubblegum, garage and UK Mersey Beat, power pop’s influence casts an eccentric wide net, from The Ramones (Johnny Ramone used to describe his band’s music as “sick bubblegum”) to Wilco. However, by and large, the musical genre doesn’t sustain longevity for a band’s identity. Even The Beatles, who refined […]

It took a long time for The Vaselines to release their sophomore record, Sex With An X — in fact just over 20 years. The Scottish-based band, essentially a duo, Frances McKee and Eugene Kelly, crafted minimalist Velvet Underground-influenced garage pop predating the recent slew of lo-fi, garage-pop bands, including Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls […]

It’s not unusual for a young singer/songwriter to crisscross the U.S. and absorb influences, initially inspired by Jack Kerouac’s On The Road and Woody Guthrie’s Bound For Glory (along with a healthy dose of Bob Dylan) developing chops in numerous coffee shops and folk clubs. But what this UK troubadour did with those experiences is […]

Since Isobel Campbell, vocalist/instrumentalist and founding member of Glasgow-based Belle & Sebastian, left that band in 2002, she has become best known for honing a duet persona in collaboration with former Screaming Trees and Queens of The Stone Age vocalist Mark Lanegan. After a number of solo efforts, including the notable Amorino in 2003, Campbell […]

Three years can seem like a lifetime in the ever-changing, frenetically charged realm of independent music. These days, decent follow-up albums are harder to come by, and unfortunately, artists tend to be condemned to the netherworlds of this merciless industry about as quickly as they are propelled into the heavens of stardom. Friend and Foe, […]

The 74-year-old Detroit native and R&B soul singer Andre Williams is literally a soul survivor. His life so far is a story that legends are made of. In 1957, before he’d reached 21, Williams had written the top 10 Billboard R&B hit “Bacon Fat.” In the early ’60s, the young songwriter co-wrote Stevie Wonder’s early […]

In the early 1970s, my parents and I drove up Hwy 17 from Watsonville, then a small farming town, to visit relatives and their new house in Foster City near San Mateo. As soon as we entered Foster City, a relatively new suburb built on landfill in the ’60s, we got lost. All the houses […]

It began with a dinner invitation. Based in North Adams, Mass., the experimental duo The Books was formed in New York City in 1999, when cellist Paul de Jong invited guitarist and vocalist Nick Zammuto, who lived in the same building, over for dinner. After de Jong played Zammuto some of his collection of audio […]

Detroit-based musician, songwriter and producer Matthew Smith has been frontman for Outrageous Cherry for more than a decade, crafting a string of fractured pop releases blurring the borders of pop and experimental music. Smith has drawn heavily from Lou Reed’s blueprint with The Velvet Underground along with influences from a spectrum of ’60s pop and […]

Peter Case has always fashioned himself a musical troubadour, even before his time with rock ’n’ roll outfits in the mid to late ’70s, joining The Nerves and then forming The Plimsouls. In 1973, he was part of a bourgeoning street musician/cabaret scene in San Francisco, which included Allen Ginsburg, among others. After the breakup […]