Music In Review

Prolific singer/songwriter/musician Lou Barlow seems to be bringing things together of late, rather than fragmenting further into additional side projects. After his departure from Dinosaur Jr., where he was a founding member, Barlow created Sebadoh with instrumentalist Eric Gaffney. Then came the lo-fi independent side project Sentridoh. Then The Folk Implosion. Having recently rejoined and […]

The San Francisco-based band Girls has been riding a wave of attention recently, making high marks with critics, getting coverage in Pitchfork and a cover story for Fader. This may also cause skeptics (like myself) to raise an eyebrow. The much-publicized early biography of the band’s songwriter/vocalist, Christopher Owens (escaped from a religious cult, kicked […]

Looking toward Biblical passages as inspiration and titles for your songs often rings a death knell for singer/songwriters who reign in the musical fringe sectors of pop, folk, rock and country — i.e. the "alt" world. Even Bob Dylan was initially dismissed for his "Christian" recordings, casting a shadow on the overlooked Slow Train Coming. […]

Based in Mali, the group Tinariwen is not only from the desert, they are the desert. Tinariwen ("empty places") is less of a "band" than a familial collective of Tuareg culture, a nomadic people who inhabit the far regions of the Sahara, spanning from west to east of Northern Africa, connected with the Tamashek language. […]

After 2006’s self-titled album reestablished them as a rock band to be reckoned with, the hoopla over Pearl Jam’s current release, Backspacer, has felt more like a pop culturally relevant event than anything they’ve done since the mid-’90s. Eddie Vedder and company had the honor of being the inaugural musical guest on Conan O’Brian’s Tonight […]

Califone frontman Tim Rutili has been busy since the band’s 2006 release, Roots & Crowns. Recently involved with a brief summer reunion of his previous band, Red Red Meat (in conjunction with the Sub Pop reissue of their seminal Bunny Gets Paid, which was reviewed here earlier this year), Rutili has also simultaneously directed an […]

The heat was killing us. The walk through Golden Gate Park lasted forever. But finally, my mom, brother and I reached Outside Lands, the festival we’d been looking forward to for months. After cooling off with strawberries and ice cream, we scoped a spot for The Duke Spirit. People crowded forward as the band appeared […]

New Zealand singer/songwriter, Neil Finn, Crowded House’s frontman, has collected musicians, singer/songwriters and bands from all across the globe — for the second time. Finn’s new 7 Worlds Collide project brings alum members from his first effort — including his brother Tim Finn (Split Enz), Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien and Phil Selway, guitarist Johnny Marr and […]

From the early 1980s, the New Zealand pop scene has flourished, mostly through the Christchurch-based label Flying Nun Records. Bands such as The Clean, The Chills and The Bats emerged from beyond the South Island of New Zealand environs with a distinct type of pop music — often spare, minimal — catching attention of like-minded […]

For over two decades, Yo La Tengo, fronted by the husband/wife duo of vocalist/guitarist Ira Kaplan and vocalist/drummer/percussionist Georgia Hubley, have crafted a wide array of slightly subverted rock songs that leans toward ’60s pop melodies. After the cementing of the group’s core with the addition of bassist James McNew in 1993, the Hoboken, N.J.-based […]

The women of roller derby are terrifying athletes. The bouts are frenzied rushes of skaters racing around a tight circular track. Pumping their bodies to speed on the quick straight-aways, the racers push and grease their way around defenders to score points as they pass opposing skaters. Last Saturday night at Redwood Acres, a packed […]

The standard line on Blur is that they were never able to crack America because they were just too English. They sing about super-British stuff that we just don’t get, like "bank holidays" and how things are "rubbish" and something called a "quango" (look it up). Blur’s one foray into the American rock scene, the […]