Jul 6th, 2012 5 Comments
The best description I've ever seen of Rakim's voice comes from the Spin Alternative Record Guide, which was pretty much the Bible for aspiring teenage rock critics in the '90s. In that book, James… Read Story »
Jun 29th, 2012 13 Comments
Polly Jean Harvey is now two decades into a pretty remarkable run, one that's kept her singular voice intact while roaming all over an aesthetic landscape that she's invented for herself. She's been… Read Story »
Jun 28th, 2012 64 Comments
Singles was the second movie written and directed by Cameron Crowe. It's an amiable rom-com starring Campbell Scott and Kyra Sedgwick, and some say a great movie, but is most notable because it was… Read Story »
Jun 11th, 2012 10 Comments
Rap has had many magical once-in-a-lifetime eras, but here's one of them. In 1992, people were just starting to figure out that it probably wasn't legal to sample anything and everything without… Read Story »
Jun 8th, 2012 27 Comments
Faith No More's Angel Dust was my first exposure to the very idea of the Difficult Follow-Up Album, and I'm guessing that thousands of other kids shared my experience. The album came three years… Read Story »
May 22nd, 2012 14 Comments
The first time I saw Spiritualized live, I was maybe 21, and I was absolutely determined that I would not experience them sober. They were playing in Rochester, about a 90-minute drive from where I… Read Story »
Apr 23rd, 2012 74 Comments
The story of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has been told a million different times in the past decade, but it remains a pretty great story. Major-label band records album, correctly believing it to be… Read Story »
Apr 20th, 2012 16 Comments
It must be some cosmically appropriate coincidence that Pavement's Slanted And Enchanted and the Beastie Boys' Check Your Head came out within a couple of days of each other. Slanted And Enchanted… Read Story »
Apr 20th, 2012 75 Comments
Where were you in '92. The music world was fascinated by "alternative rock," which was culturally ascendent and extremely commercially viable: 120 Minutes held sway, Nirvana were a year into (and… Read Story »
Mar 9th, 2012 32 Comments
Over the past year, Adele's 21 has sold a few gajillion copies and sent plenty of music writers on soul-searching journeys trying to figure out why that happened and what it means. My own personal… Read Story »
