Archive Search Results

1. Shrapnel

   The California Wavves’ Wavves (Fat Possum) Is Insane and Out of Control, Just Like Real Life

   By Ray Cummings

   Published: March 12, 2009

   What Wavves' Nathan Williams vividly renders on cassette and aluminum isn't the Beach Boys' carefree beachscape, with its bathing beauties, surfboard-wielding Adonises, and...

2. Live Wire

   Brave Citizens

   By Ray Cummings

   Published: January 15, 2009

   In terms of originality, there's nothing brave about what these citizens are up to. Sonically, they worship at the un-nuanced, widescreen altars of U2, Angels & Airwaves, and...

3. Live Wire

   The Spinto Band

   By Ray Cummings

   Published: November 6, 2008

   There's nothing especially new about douchebag rock. The Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, and countless others have shoehorned the subgenre into the larger pop canon. But in the...

4. Night & Day

   Spinto Win

   By Ray Cummings

   Published: October 30, 2008

   There's nothing especially new about douchebag rock; the Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, and countless others have shoehorned the subgenre into the larger pop canon. But in the...

5. Live Wire

   Flobots

   By Ray Cummings

   Published: September 25, 2008

   Denver's Flobots seem intent on fomenting a populist revolution — or, at least, cashing in on the sugarcoated, romanticized, anything-can-happen idea of one. Perhaps...

6. Live Wire

   RZA (as Bobby Digital)

   By Ray Cummings

   Published: June 12, 2008

   Poor RZA. When the studio overlord produces a Wu-Tang Clan masterwork, it lands on RCA or Universal. Yet this chessboard fiend, martial-arts aficionado, and Quentin Tarantino...

7. Live Wire

   Jay-Z

   By Ray Cummings

   Published: April 10, 2008

   Try as you might, there's no knocking Jay-Z's hustle. So what if he's no longer president of Def Jam? So what if he's mostly irrelevant? So what if there are more literate,...

8. Night & Day

   Earley to Rise

   Blitzen Trapper catches buzz through the fuzz

   By Ray Cummings

   Published: February 28, 2008

   Drum sets crash and explode; uncontrollable feedback erupts; random, screeching wraiths arrive and disappear with an equal lack of warning; relaxed fits of laughter compete...

9. Shrapnel

   Blitzen Trapper catches buzz through the fuzz

   By Ray Cummings

   Published: February 28, 2008

   Drum kits crash and explode; uncontrollable feedback erupts; random, screeching wraiths arrive and disappear with an equal lack of warning; relaxed fits of laughter compete...

10. Shrapnel

    Stop and Smell the Noises

    Clipd Beaks peck away at post-rock

    By Ray Cummings

    Published: December 6, 2007

    Greg Pritchard is a consummate multi-tasker. On an early November afternoon, the Minnesota-bred musician is conducting a telephone interview with a reporter from an Oakland...

11. Live Wire

    Saturday Looks Good to Me

    By Ray Cummings

    Published: November 8, 2007

    God bless K Records' tousled-bedhead messes, but it's a mystery to us what, exactly, Saturday Looks Good to Me are doing on this label's roster. These Ann Arbor, Michigan-based...

12. Live Wire

    The Cave Singers, and Black Mountain

    By Ray Cummings

    Published: October 18, 2007

    Cave Singers frontman/guitarist Pete Quirk doesn't need a band, really. He's got a vocal delivery so weathered and lived-in — thin as a middle-aged woman's croak, almost,...

13. Shrapnel

    On Your Markers

    Glossy format

    By Ray Cummings

    Published: October 11, 2007

    So witty, so inquisitive, so downright loquacious is Elisa Ambrogio that a telephone interview with her threatens to unravel at any given moment, to turn obliviously tangential...

14. Live Wire

    Mouthus

    By Ray Cummings

    Published: October 4, 2007

    The output of Brooklyn duo Mouthus consists — for the most part, anyway — of variations on sepulchral groans. Brian Sullivan's imploding, acidic guitar gestures and...

15. Live Wire

    Beyoncé

    And she can sing, too

    By Ray Cummings

    Published: August 23, 2007

    From blandly cute child stardom to booty-licious, cold isolationism to diva-level, so-in-luv obsession to pan-media omnipresence — that's the trail former Destiny's Child...

16. Live Wire

    Benni Hemm Hemm

    Very green

    By Ray Cummings

    Published: July 12, 2007

    Kajak — the sophomore long-player from namesake/frontman Benedikt H. Hermannsson's Icelandic easy-listening band — may not be the textbook definition of a guilty...

17. Live Wire

    Battles

    Don't ask

    By Ray Cummings

    Published: June 28, 2007

    No calendar year is complete without at least a handful of insurgent, crit-consensus staples that can't quite win over the populace. M.I.A, Strokes, Liz Phair — we're...

18. Live Wire

    The Mary Timony Band

    Kiss her sass

    By Ray Cummings

    Published: May 24, 2007

    Two songs on The Shapes We Make show the influence moving back to Washington, D.C., has had on Mary Timony's writing. The spritely "Sharpshooter" — as close as the...

19. Live Wire

    The Silver Daggers

    Keep your hands inside the vehicle

    By Ray Cummings

    Published: May 10, 2007

    The Los Angeles coeds in Silver Daggers bring the apocalyptic no-wave party ruckus, and then some: They're a viciously exuberant counterpoint to like-minded labelmates Coughs....

20. Listen Up

    Beach House

    Beach House
    (Carpark Records)

    By Ray Cummings

    Published: April 26, 2007

    Airily pretty, vicariously depressing, and just plain emotionally exhausting, the Velvet Underground & Nico tune "Sunday Morning" nailed comedown bummer rock with such...