Bands rarely use up major labels and then toss them aside. It’s usually the other way around. But The Go! Team had the opportunity to exploit Sony’s massive resources without selling its soul with a one-time distribution deal that managed to sell a quarter of a million copies worldwide of its 2004 debut, Thunder, Lightning, […]

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After Nicky Wire of the Manic Street Preachers recently came down hard on Snow Patrol, it reminded how much I, too, despise that band. I’ve witnessed few bands make such a concerted effort to be the soundtrack to Grey’s Anatomy. Barring the sappy, unlistenable ballad “Run”, 2004’s Final Straw actually had some decent songs. You could tell […]

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By its third record, 2001’s heartfelt and immaculate Girls Can Tell, Spoon stopped sounding like the sum of its influences (namely, Guided by Voices, the Pixies, and Nirvana) and actually created the outline of a sound that it adheres to to this day. Succinct arrangements, spiky guitars, and minimal beats have served Spoon well over […]

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Bret and Jermaine will be present for another season of Flight of the Conchords on HBO. Thank God. This show absolutely kills me. And, despite the fact that the humor is so dry and subtle, people must actually be watching it. Sub Pop recently released a teaser EP of the band’s off-kilter folk, The Distant […]

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Rilo Kiley is a band from which I never thought I’d be anticipating new music. Its first two records sounded trapped in middling indie rock with a country tinge. Ironically, it wasn’t until its major label debut, More Adventurous, that made me pay closer attention, particularly the single “Portions for Foxes.” Jenny Lewis became a […]

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Hey, remember when Gallic drunkstack Serge Gainsbourg told an already uncomfortable Whitney Houston he wanted to idiomatically “fouck” her on French TV? (Yeah, me neither. It was 1986, and I was barely two.) Anyways, a couple of years after recording his infamous “Lemon Incest” with then 12-year-old, daughter-by-Jane Charlotte – whose first album in twenty […]

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Achtung, babes. All is definitely nicht gut with former Ash Ra Tempel guitarist Manuel Göttsching. After catching the .jpg-only cover of LCD Soundsystem’s sole-selling Nike commission 45:33 – which really does look a heckuva lot like the godfather of techno’s 1984 meisterwerk E2-E4 – Göttsching’s camp had this to say: “LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy has […]

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