Once upon a time, I hated Company Flow. Their music sounded like rap as rigid noise-attack, all funless bellowing and construction-site clang. El-P's solo yammer "Patriotism" was the one track I…   Read Story »

If the Walkmen were a basketball player, they'd be Tyson Chandler: Charming, erudite, handsome, and smooth, but not flashy or self-aggrandizing. Like Chandler, they bring a fundamental intensity to…   Read Story »

In the years I've been writing about music, I've done a whole ton of interviews -- some great, some painfully awkward. But my favorite one happened a little more than four years ago at a Brazilian…   Read Story »

Those of us who make our livings writing blog posts about music have an easy time forgetting this, but underground music is still very much a real thing, and bands like Tragedy are the reason why. To…   Read Story »

I've had the digital promo of Nootropics, the sophomore album from Baltimore dream-rock band Lower Dens, for a couple of months now. And according to my iTunes, I've listened to its 10 songs an…   Read Story »

The underground metal landscape is a rocky and striated one, full of sub-sections and micro-scenes, so it's hard to make any sweeping generalizations about it. But here's one: Over the last 20 years…   Read Story »

Spiritualized have never recorded a bad album. Depending on your feelings about Amazing Grace, they've never recorded one that's less than great. (That one had "Hold On," so I'm on the pro-Amazing…   Read Story »

Amadou & Mariam have been making music forever, but when they first hit my radar about seven years ago, their mere existence seemed like some impossible-to-make-up story of music's power to overcome…   Read Story »

Seeing Screaming Females live for the first time is a head-snap-back moment; until they're actually playing in front of you, there's no way you could possibly know the band is this good. Before the…   Read Story »

Even though the score he created for the movie ended up unused, Drive is the best thing that could've ever happened to Johnny Jewel. Jewel is the hazy-synthpop producer and multi-instrumentalist…   Read Story »