The further Anticon strays from its original granola posi-artiste rap roots, the more intriguing this Oakland, California label becomes. England’s Bracken represents the latest link in the imprint’s evolutionary chain, though slotting We Know About the Need is something of a challenge. While it isn’t really a shoegaze record in…
When Kevin Barnes started Of Montreal in the mid-1990s, he was a bit late to the Athens, GA, scene’s retro pop-rock party. At that time, Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Olivia Tremor Control ruled the roost of the ripening Elephant 6 Collective, beguiling indie-rock audiences and tastemakers by…
The SYR series of recordings were the right idea at the right time. Issued via Sonic Youth’s imprint — beginning in 1997 and continuing, albeit sporadically, to the present day — the releases allowed the group to shrug out of verse-chorus-verse strictures self-imposed as (relatively) new Geffen signees. Lyrics were…
It’s a safe bet that Pepper grew up on a steady diet of Sublime, Sugar Ray, and post-1995 Red Hot Chili Peppers, with the occasional grunge snack. The Hawaii trio’s sophomoric, agreeable, brand-spanking new No Shame will likely find great favor at barbecues, ganja-flavored get-togethers, and luau-themed fraternity parties everywhere…
Don’t let those could-be-Finnish song titles fool you. Anathallo hails from Michigan, its name draws reference from a Japanese folktale, and its debut, Floating World, bears little resemblance to any of the zillion CD-Rs recorded in recent years by Avarus or Avarus-associated concerns. This five-years-running septet fuses the reeling, jet-stream…
The Portland, Oregon-based duo of Pete Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman effectively straddle the worlds of both freeform noise and more mainstream songwriting. As the Yellow Swans, they collaborate — with experimental noise artist John Wiese, among many others — tour, and operate their Jyrk label within the parameters of…
“I’m rich and famous/With a million-dollar contract/But it’s not around,” Monstrous guitarist/singer Led Gethway brags disingenuously over the luscious, distorto-scour psych of “Rich & Famous.” Too old to be Hanson’s grunge-punk successors but less slickly presented and pointedly generic than, say, Silverchair, Led Gethway and his brothers Ken and Alex…
The cloaking of A Lazarus Taxon in immaculate, arty, black-and-white photographs of car accidents seems antithetical to this boxed set’s methodically crafted contents: 15 years’ worth of hard-to-track-down Tortoise droppings confined to three discs and a single DVD. An indeed-geek drinking game could be built around the Chicago post-rockers’ persistent…
Regina Spektor’s tricky tongue and fading Russian accent separate her from the ever-expanding crowd of Tori Amos/Fiona Apple wanna-bes who sport “funky” hats and own well-worn piano stools. Begin to Hope might be less histrionic than 2004’s Soviet Kitsch, but it’s still great fun to bear witness to this NYC…
You’ve gotta love the contradictory impulses at work in the title, a clever enjoining of modesty and arrogance emblematic of Sonic Youth’s attitudes and recordings for the better part of the band’s quarter-century run. Rather Ripped is a perfect name choice in literal terms relating to its content — the…
Much of U.K. outfit Art Brut’s appeal lies in the wide-eyed incredulity of frontgeezer Eddie Argos, the need he constantly feels to state (and then immediately restate) particular observations as if to highlight how incredible or ridiculous some circumstance is. “I saw her naked — twice!” he exclaims about a…
There’s a focused single-mindedness to every Excepter song that hints at humorlessness behind the decks. So it’s a pleasant surprise, during a recent telephone exchange, to discover that front man John Fell Ryan is as amusing in conversation as he can be free-associative and indecipherable with his lyrics, as personable…
Raging rats in rattling cages? Surgical sound pollution? Bring it on, say San Francisco electronic duo Matmos — it’s all grist for the mill of appropriated aural byproducts they operate. Their most collaborative, conceptual, and spirited full-length to date, The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast consists…
For a band based in Baltimore, Wilderness sure is in touch with its British side. The band’s just-released Vessel States and self-titled debut — which garnered the quartet considerable acclaim from Pitchfork and its readers last year — draw as heavily from the other side of the pond as they…
Please excuse Nick Diamonds and Jaime T’ambour while they resurrect themselves. If you’ll recall, they bought the proverbial farm at the conclusion of The Unicorns’ landmark Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?, a sort of fey, goofy, indie rock Final Exit. The Canadian pair have since jettisoned Alden…
This Is an Exercise provides more evidence that one’s playmates don’t necessarily determine one’s own character. Anna “Oxygen” Huff’s many guest spots on twee efforts from the likes of The Blow, The Microphones, and Mirah don’t prepare you for the dancey This Is an Exercise, which is more bionic I…
The septet Nous Non Plus scares up sumptuous cool on its self-titled debut, whipping elements borrowed from The Strokes, Stereolab, and The B-52’s into delectable French pastries. And so we get delights like “Lawnmower Boy,” in which the band makes like Guitar Wolf on a New Wave kick; the disco…
Filmmakers like to go on about how rhyme-slingers make such naturalistic actors, how the MCs’ innate intensity translates well to the big screen. Oakland-based Why? makes an equally convincing argument for the viability of undie backpackers as high-caliber, indie-rock front men. Anticon Records stalwart/everyman Jonathan “Yoni” Wolf started Why? a…
Beck Hansen’s finest year was unquestionably 1994, when Los Angeles’ most talented high school dropout served up three great records — an indie-folk trawl (One Foot in the Grave); the multigenre, major-label mash-up that made his name (Mellow Gold); and a whacked, lo-fi sampler of just about every style of…
On this debut, the chameleonic Vancouver fivesome is lovin’ the ’70s. “Oh, we can’t stand/Your modern music/We feel afflicted,” singer Stephen McBean moans on the saxophone-and-drums swells of “Modern Music.” Things get retro on the bounding-down-the-boulevard “Druganaut,” which sounds like Jimi Hendrix by way of Band of Gypsys. But when…
The romance of I Am the World Trade Center bandmates Amy Dykes and Dan Gellar disintegrated during the recording of The Cover Up, and the evidence is all over this dance-pop slab. Dykes devotes her slightly blasé, slightly off-the-rails vocals to lyrics that imply secret lovers unveiled, uncomfortable standoffs and…
