“Mogwai have done with the post-rock schtick!” blazed a Times Square neon monstrosity near the penthouse offices of Matador Records. Okay, so the cheeky hype was actually a stray sentence buried in an early draft of the Glaswegian band’s latest label bio. But a telling and heroic statement just the…

As anyone whose assorted crosses to bear include working with a slew of self-absorbed, green-haired brats and listening to their incessant prattling of the “awesome” nature of this or that fourth-generation punk band will recognize, the line between irony and stupidity basically doesn’t exist anymore. Don’t blame Spinal Tap; it’s…

That staple (some call it a cliché) of rock ‘n’ roll, the double live album, rears its head once again this week in the form of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s Live in New York City (Columbia). And accompanied by the video of the concert — here, an…

Living back East a decade or so ago, I quite often was the mail recipient of tapes from one Tim Cronin, a hulking, musically hip record store clerk whose off-hours attachment to his portastudio was matched only by his adroitness at coming up with intriguing names for the various ad…

While most career-minded Tucson musicians yearn to get out of the Old Pueblo — fans aren’t so much fickle as they are indifferent to home-brewed sounds, and the print media’s support, at least in terms of serious, critical coverage, has dwindled to a shockingly low ebb over the last few…

The future’s so bright, I gotta wear granny shades: The Alternative Nation, having finally subsumed ’60s sounds, from Brian Wilson (Flaming Lips) to Buffalo Springfield (Beachwood Sparks) to Nick Drake (Belle and Sebastian) to the Beatles (practically every band associated with the Elephant 6 brain trust), is on the cusp…

Let us once again ponder the arc of Tucson’s Rainer Ptacek, the late slide guitar maestro and folk/blues singer-songwriter whose fateful duel with brain cancer may have brought heartache — but during an extended (if temporary) recovery period also brought an astonishing resurgence of his musical skills that surpassed even…

Quick, what’s the most abused critical cliché of all time? Barring hoary usage like “throbbing surf bass line” and “jangly guitars” plus up-and-comers “Brian Wilson-like” and “Flaming Lips-ian,” there’s no question the term “Beatlesque” should by all rights be retired and only allowed out of the word processor after a…

In Austin last March, the Black Halos breezed in to Emo’s and proceeded to tame an unruly SXSW crowd until the show-me punks were eating out of the Vancouver quintet’s mitts, begging for more, and getting it. As the Halos’ smeary racket slammed from the stage, acrobatic lead singer Billy…

Was there ever a more beloved yet underappreciated combo than Saint Etienne? Well, sure; pop’s endless highway is littered with yesterday’s papers, musical roadkill too classy and talented for the general populace. And that includes the hipster indie sector — of whom, it must be said, can be as fickle…

Was it really that long ago? 1987 — when Copernican rumblings emanating from Walthamstow, England, reached across the Atlantic and transmitted small but significant tremors at we indiecentric, psychedelia-inclined record collectors? Nearly a decade and a half — and umpteen albums — after Inner Marshland set its controls for the…

With feet nimbly perched in rootsy alt-country, luminous pop and never-say-die ’70s guitar rock, Denton, Texas, quartet 12LB. Test makes a memorable debut that does the region’s roots scene proud. Naturally, reference points do pop up, and the group clearly has the cruise control on its Econoline aimed at Austin…

Boston’s Abunai! formed five years ago and has been quietly but steadily accumulating an international fan base since its 1997 debut, Universal Mind Decoder. A mind-bending homage to the members’ diverse influences (Byrds, Pink Floyd, Richard Thompson, Amon Duul II, even “Maggot Brain”-era Funkadelic), it was followed a couple of…

Crawling from the aural and psychic wreckage of Brian Jonestown Massacre a couple of years ago, guitarist Bobby Hecksher (who’s also worked with Beck) blinked his eyes a few times, massaged his bruised limbs, and promptly got back on the horse. This time, though, one of his own device, christened…

Given the intense fetishism we Americans apply to the early ’90s grunge era, it’s nothing short of stupefying that the hard-rock subgenre’s punk/noize forebears have all but vanished in terms of systematic overhauls and resurrections of the once-significant back catalogues. Sonic Youth and the Birthday Party come to mind among…

This will come as a shock to all you earnest local entrepreneurs and so-called scene boosters who have released, or are planning to release, a multi-band compilation, but no one gives a shit about another crummy regional sampler. Aside from, of course, that big-haired metal chick who pestered you to…

As a longtime follower and frequent champion of antipodal sounds (and having written extensively about the lands down under from the mid-’80s through the early ’90s), your humble scribe must confess to being rather nonplussed in regard to New Zealand bands of the past half-decade or so. It’s easy enough…

The thing about Rush fans — Hello! I know you’re out there, I can hear you breathing through your mouths! Is this thing on? — is that, by definition, they missed the boat, victims of a pop-culture-induced inferiority complex. Y’see, Rush, forming in Toronto circa ’69 by Gary Lee Weinrib,…

Does the world need yet another live Neil Young album? If your response lingers upon shuddering memories of Frampton Comes Alive!, then vacates into the realm of Pearl Jam-does-25-live-CDs abject boredom, you’re probably reading the wrong review. For Young, among all contemporary performers still extant (the Dead don’t count, despite…

Philly beat combo Nixon’s Head professes no interest in Britney Spears’ abs, has no stake in the future of Napster, and doesn’t seem very inclined to update the résumé by switching to Clinton’s Head. The six-piece does, however, state clearly for the record (in its bio), “It’s never been a…

Life’s little disappointments, parts 68-70: That punk rock turned Lynyrd Skynyrd into the punch line of a thousand bubba jokes; that the Replacements didn’t split up after loony guitarist Bob Stinson left; and that Steve Earle forsook dope-shootin’ and hell-raisin’ for personal sobriety and “serious” art. (Okay, I’m kidding about…

Marketing prowess being what it is, the three surviving Doors, along with impresario/hagiographer/leech/keeper of the flame Danny Sugerman, are seasoned pros at polishing the late Lizard King’s scales, and a current round of activity offers an unprecedented measure of good news/bad news.Stoned Immaculate: The Music of the Doors, of course,…