It’s fitting that the band name Avail evokes the word “alive.” The best rock, like all the best art, is not some rarefied air breathable only to people who wear puffy shirts and pointy shoes. It’s music that makes everyday life feel alive. Richmond, Virginia’s Avail — perhaps the only…
Nowheresvilles have always produced more than their fair share of good bands. The alchemy that breeds inspiration from frustration works overtime when the only place open late is Circle K. But while most bands wish themselves out of the dust of their home turf, Throw Rag frolics in it. On…
Black Flag was once accused of being neo-Nazis, and so were the Ramones. But when NYC hardcore pioneers Agnostic Front came along, maybe the alarm-ringers couldn’t be blamed for perceiving racism in the lefty world of punk. After all, the cover of 1984’s Victim in Pain is an archival photo…
When a band’s cast-off B-sides are good enough to indict an entire subgenre as inane, either the band doesn’t know its own strengths, or a generation of indie-poppers had better put away the four-track and finally apply to graduate school. Outrageous Cherry’s “My Suspicious Midwest” stands somewhere near Hüsker Dü’s…
No one’s questioning the Badger State’s musical cred. After all, who among us is not devoted to the band Squirrel Bait or the vaudeville novelty hit “Mention My Name in Sheboygan”? But until 2004, Wisconsin seemed not to have a music scene vital enough to escape the state’s web of…
All but the dullest punks get restless with age, but while Joe Strummer branched out in high-minded directions like world-folk, cruder and ruder minds chase a different kind of eclecticism. On The Dwarves Must Die, for example, Blag Dahlia trades whatever class he’s got left for an orgy of ill-bred…
Dwelling among the fungi and bottom feeders, in the shadows of the hipster ecosystem known as a regional music scene, appears that rarest of creatures, the noble underdog. The underdog appears at first to have the markings of its more dominant peers. In the case of Detroit’s High Strung, it’s…
With West Coast punk having attained the rarefied cultural stature of bobbleheads and above-the-ass-crack tattoos, its pioneers aren’t exactly first in line for an interview with Terry Gross. But decades since inventing goth-punk and five years after regaining the rights to the name T.S.O.L., this Orange County quartet still offers…
Pity the gladly submissive rock consumer, always in the market for a proper ass kicking. Where’s one to turn in 2004, with so much tight denim and retro-riffage being proffered, and nary a well-aimed boot? Somewhere back there in the primordial pavement is the answer, and it goes by one…
Like pop homunculi, the Kinks obsessives who have crowded up indie scenes for nigh half a decade are missing something essential in the souls. Their chirpy lilts and out-of-place Britishisms exist in a habitat largely bereft of weight, wit or variance. New Pornographers honcho A.C. Newman (a.k.a. Carl) has transcended…
When Greg Cartwright, a garage-rock revival vet from way back before Rolling Stone caught wind and broke out the champagne, rinsed off his customary gravel with 2001’s folk-influenced Reigning Sound debut, he revealed himself a breezy, literate songwriter. Two albums later, we find Cartwright back under the burqa. Too Much…
While other New York bands write historical fiction based in the smoky barrooms of the New Wave era, French Kicks are engaged in a romantic fantasy that takes place in the studio. Indie music, much less rock in general, is rarely so produced and resolutely hi-fi as The Trial of…
The Neon Philharmonic can blame its commercial failure on the same malignant spirit that regularly sends the catchiest, craftiest stuff skidding into the bargain bin of history. Only “Morning Girl” made it onto the radio (#17, 1969), and it’s a vivid summary of the style: orchestral pop in the mode…
We’re talking about the potty-mouthed singer of a band that’s two parts Dead Boys and one part Crazy Horse — accuse him of being a folk singer and he just might slam his glass down on the bar. But The Sauce is a blatant violation of the usual rocker-goes-country equation…
Billy Bragg’s slashing stridency and plain old passion seem like an ideal pill for fearful and politically frustrating times such as these. In the early 1980s, with his lonely Stratocaster and sometimes guileless Cockney wobble, the British neo-folkie transcended his acute Anglocentrism with anger, melancholy and whimsy, all as literate…
There was no shortage of angry political punk back in 1984, thanks to Black Flag’s countless, often premature offspring in the U.S. and bands like the Exploited and Discharge in the U.K. It’s no wonder, then, that New Model Army singer Justin Sullivan saw fit to call himself Slade the…
Just try to kick back with your favorite musical nonconformists: It ain’t no picnic. If Jello Biafra’s principled disdain for small talk doesn’t ruin it, then Jonathan Richman’s misplaced empathy for the comestibles will (“Lonely little coleslaw, ain’t got no friends . . .”). Meanwhile, Queens of the Stone Age…
A tribute album to a critically acclaimed songwriter these days seems inevitable, as is the fact that it would be packed with luminaries. But while John Hiatt’s Southern folk-rock snapshots have been so widely covered as to nearly qualify as modern standards, It’ll Come to You shows them to be…
Known as a live animal setting up its bank of Marshall stacks not on the stage but in the middle of the floor — Lightning Bolt is often hit by writers with hard-ass hyperbole that makes them sound like experi-metal terrorists. But the Providence bass/drums duo is merely the scariest…
Hot Rod Circuit moved from Auburn, Alabama, to New Haven, Connecticut, in a day. They may not have arrived dressed like the Blues Brothers looking more like a union of displaced roadies in tee shirts, jeans and tats but back in 1998, Hot Rod Circuit was certainly a band on…
Damn if Big Silver’s unassuming pub rock doesn’t sneak into your bloodstream and strengthen with each listen, until your head is swimming. And it’s not just the Arkansas quintet’s musical subtlety that makes it seem like an undercover operation: In Bizarro World, their hidden gem of a self-titled 2001 debut…
“That’s just one little facet of what I do, so that’s a bit of a problem,” says Canadian-born guitar god Pat Travers, whose modest place in rock history is welded by his 1980 hit “Snortin’ Whiskey,” possibly the most bombastic hard-rock anthem of all time. Too bad for him, but…
