My most vivid Les Savy Fav concert memory involves shirtless, bearlike frontman Tim Harrington shoving a microphone below his belt line, grabbing a nearby audience member by the head, pulling that…   Read Story »

Sleater-Kinney: the name suggests a joint sociological survey, or perhaps a university residence hall. Turns out it's the Lacey, WA street on which the band held practices. It's a fitting name for a…   Read Story »

In roughly the early 1900s, painting dissolved into abstraction and appropriation, and artists working since then have veered away from realism. As modern life splintered and proliferated, popular…   Read Story »

Looking back it's almost hard to believe. Three members of the quintessential post-punk band choose to carry on after the suicide of their lead singer and bandleader only to become dancefloor…   Read Story »

Next month, Darkthrone will release The Underground Resistance, their 16th studio LP (or 15th, depending on how you catalog these things). It's been 26 years since their formation (as Black Death),…   Read Story »

Beck boasts one of the most interesting, most schizophrenic discographies of any contemporary artist this side of David Bowie. Like Bowie, Beck has built a career on restlessness and reinvention,…   Read Story »

Which is more amazing: that 2013 marks 30 years of the Flaming Lips as a functioning concern, or that it heralds the 23rd year of their partnership with Warner Bros. Records? It's difficult to judge.…   Read Story »

Every year, the Village Voice polls a shit-ton of music critics, ex-critics, part-timers, and bloggers for its annual Pazz & Jop music critics' poll, soliciting top-10 lists of albums and singles.…   Read Story »

All due respect to Sonic Youth, perhaps the Walkmen should adopt the washing machine as their emblem. And not just any brand: a Maytag model. The Washington, D.C. / New York City / Philadelphia…   Read Story »

For a band that lasted only five years and released only four official full-length albums, the Smiths' catalog is a nightmare to untangle. The 70 or so songs the band eventually issued were…   Read Story »