Since 1995’s brass-ring-snatching (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, Oasis’ Gallagher brothers have matched the British media’s hype, rung for rung, with musical grandiosity. Neither the band nor the press have seemed willing to admit that Oasis was not haute cuisine, but good grub — pop played with diamond-hard attitude and…

Smart-asses in more ways than one, Daron Malakian and Serj Tankian may not be the first to have read media critic Danny Schechter while pumping S layer and actually absorbed both. But on Mezmerize, System of a Down’s third and most consistent album, the front men, now equally billed, revive…

Troubled Hubble’s debut is something of a revival of the suburban psychedelia practiced by ’90s indie bands such as Pavement, but with a literate new twist. The Chicago-area quartet’s music is, characteristically, a weave of trebly guitars stitched with strings and eclectic snatches of sound. Singer Chris Otepka declaims up…

While band-of-the-moment Franz Ferdinand and the opportunists in its wake are hyped as “dance rock,” Gang of Four, the cool-influence-of-the-moment, barely played rock at all, much less dance music. 1979’s Entertainment!, the debut of the now-reunited British quartet, is a trove of beguilingly tilted political songs, more alien to hoary…

Prince Paul doing an official turntable album is a little like Steve Vai, or any of the other guitar gods that Paul and his peers supplanted, doing an official guitar album: It was always the point — the only difference is that he’s admitting it. So here’s Prince Paul sans…

Denmark’s Raveonettes are not exactly soulful, but they are soulfully obsessed with pop music’s halcyon past. And unlike most other style bands, Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo sculpt their obsession into something beautiful, not merely fashionable. Pretty in Black, the boy-girl duo’s third and most original album, combines early-’60s…

The original twist of ’70s glam rock — in its less artsy (and better) form — was the basic contradiction of dudes in outrageously feminine costumes playing aggressive, back-to-basics rock ‘n’ roll. To varying degrees, Slade, T. Rex, and Gary Glitter exemplified this angle of the weirdest chapter of British…

The B-52’s for the post-Simpsons era, the five members of Detroit’s Electric Six make dancing not only fun again, but funny. In the proud tradition of the band’s 2003 debut, Fire, there’s an emergency in progress on the new Señor Smoke, and the only solution is to dance as if…

There’s nothing like a dose of yesterday’s flavors to put today’s in perspective. Roughly representative of hard rock from a time when “grunge” didn’t require quotation marks, Local H’s Scott Lucas is not only from the mid-’90s, but of the mid-’90s, ahead of his time only in the minimal guitar-and-drums…

You can’t listen to “Bizarre Love Triangle” or any of New Order’s other tech-pop oldies without marveling that a generation of teenagers thought such stuff conferred sophistication, compared to, say, George Michael. But having never matched the dark romance of their original incarnation as Joy Division, the quartet’s strummy bass…

It’s understandable that much sophisticated ink has been spent on Q and Not U’s context, rather than its music. The band does, after all, come complete with its share of buzzy reference points, including (try not to get nauseous) “dance punk,” “DC-core” and “emo.” But let’s pretend we’re blissfully unschooled…

Call her the anti-Norah Jones. Crinkly-voiced, not particularly friendly, more issues than a thrift-store guitar — Martha Wainwright is a rare example of the darker folk-inspired singer-songwriter. And occasionally, she takes it too far, as when she molests a great song with the refrain “Ya bloody mother fuckin’ asshole.” Likewise,…

While U2 without the hubris sounds like not only a bad idea, but a self-canceling one, The Devlins — preceding bands like Travis and Coldplay — have been exploring that gas planet for nearly a decade. And as it turns out, there’s life there after all, particularly in love songs…

The greatest cult bands of recent decades — The Pogues, The Replacements, The Pixies — have been musical universes unto themselves. By that standard, Leatherface fits right in, even if the British band’s fan base is closer in size to a cult-of-a-cult. Sprouting around 1990 from melodic hardcore, Dickensian-named bandleader…

As befits a band that’s a teen-culture purist’s dream, Ash spent part of the four years since its last album producing its own horror movie. Innocent of all things emo or artsy on its new album Meltdown, Tim Wheeler’s Belfast quartet rips through glam-casual anthems about clones, vampires and breath-stealing…

Woe to hip-hop. Sometime in the past year, mainstream MCs became so venal that you don’t so much listen to them as vicariously experience their bloat of self-importance. Meanwhile, a once-hot underground got colonized just enough to lose its thunder, blurring the line to the point that DJ Hi-Tek and…

On his affable comeback album, Billy Idol just barely succumbs to the demon that haunts Hollywood recording studios, whispering in the ear of every aging rocker, “Better tack on some drum loops for the Hip-Hop Generation, old man!” That leaves most of Devil’s Playground for the original arena punk to…

A band had better have a double keg of chutzpah on hand when its idol and main influence is in the room. Luckily for the Yuppie Pricks, Jello Biafra has a sense of humor — one that the band has appropriated, along with the grubby urgency of the Dead Kennedys’…

The one-man-band scenario always carries a greater potential for silliness than your average act. Scott Wexton, a.k.a. the Voodoo Organist, is no stranger to kitsch himself, what with glow-skull stage props, excursions on the theremin (the geekiest instrument ever devised), and songs about being dipped in battery acid by the…

Burn to Shine is the kind of medium-rare concept you hatch at 4 a.m. with your best friend — except that Brendan Canty actually has resources and connections. Thus, the former bassist for the seemingly defunct Fugazi has created a video artifact in which eight bands play one song each…

It’s no surprise that the new album from a band just signed to Sub Pop should be referred to in critical quarters as “a rock record.” But although Low isn’t a rock band (or at least has never been easily characterized as one), it turns out that the trio, which…

What besides the electric guitar, in nature or technology, can sound so much like flatulence and also sound so beautiful? Only a few guitarists — Keith Richards, Johnny Ramone — can make you wonder such a thing. The cover story of the latest from the Bellrays — the Riverside, California,…