If Blink-182’s last record, the surprisingly maudlin Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, was like a pinch of novocaine in the Vaseline, the debut from Boxcar Racer (a side project featuring Blink singer-guitarist Tom Delonge and drummer Travis Barker) is even more numbing. Listening to this disc — with its…

For a white boy, Dan Auerbach sounds as black as Art Modell’s heart. The Black Keys front man sings as if he was sired by Jimi Hendrix, weaned on Wild Turkey in T-Model Ford’s shotgun shack, then mentored by Mountain’s Leslie West. The latter would explain why “Leavin’ Trunk” sounds…

“This is not a film about Vietnam — this is Vietnam,” Francis Ford Coppola famously boasted upon returning from the South Pacific after the harrowing shoot for Apocalypse Now. The Cajun-metal supergroup Down can relate, having experienced firsthand the same drug-addled pandemonium that blurred the line between fantasy and reality…

It should come as little surprise that Andrew W.K. loves roller coasters. “I take fun very seriously,” the Detroit native says during a recent phone interview, his excitement level rising when talk turns to amusement parks. “There’s no such thing as going too far; there’s no such thing as too…