Ruts are normal, and nowhere is this truer than in art, where it’s easier to be a follower than a leader. So it is that metal and hardcore, which broke out of the morass of their heavily scripted, regimented styles by cross-pollinating, have slid back into predictability after a brief…

It’s been a tough year for Thrice—personally and professionally. The sometimes bristling, sometimes atmospheric post-core California rockers are ready to close the book on their putative “return-to-basics” album, Beggars, as well as the disc’s accompanying tour cycle. It’s been a rough go—one that’s found the entire quartet dealing with issues…

The accolades went to rivals the Dead Kennedys, but hardcore provocateurs M.D.C. weren’t far behind. The band began while singer Dave Dictor attended the University of Texas in Austin. Outraged at the outpouring of grief over John Wayne’s death in ’79, Dictor connected Wayne’s right-wing views and jingoistic films in…

There’s something in life to intimidate every soul—a person, an opportunity, the heart’s desire—and perhaps that’s part of Frightened Rabbit’s appeal. Boldly seizing a moniker his mother hung on him when social anxiety held him back a year in nursery school, Scott Hutchinson’s Northern Scotland quintet plays earnest self-searching paeans…

When it burst on the scene two years ago with its self-titled, Afro-centric, indie-pop debut, Vampire Weekend was the subject of such overheated blogger buzz and hipster adoration that it didn’t even have to await its sophomore release before the backlash began. Hopefully all the haters got it out of…

Write a hit. Major-label execs have mouthed those words so many times, it should just be tattooed on their heads when they get the job. But, like love, hit-making isn’t something formulated out of thin air. It happens almost magically in the proper, propitious circumstances. Trying to satisfy that demand…

Idealism doesn’t age as well as cynicism. Perhaps that’s why punk’s earnest socio-politic evolved into the ironic distance of indie rock. It may also be why there are so few artists like Ted Leo, who’ve retained both the brash challenge of their rhetoric and its compassionate spirit through two decades…

In a certain way, RJD2’s latest, The Colossus, is the album the artist has been building toward over his entire career. On it, like on a sitcom “clip show,” the versatile DJ samples music and production styles spanning his dozen years of recording. That’s no small feat: RJD2’s artistic journey…

Andy Hull’s driven. The Manchester Orchestra frontman isn’t satisfied just having a musical career—he wants greatness. Not the chart-topping ubiquity of Jonas Brothers, Black Eyed Peas or Lady Gaga, but the kind of critical and crossover success enjoyed by Nirvana and The Flaming Lips, two admitted touchstones. It’s a high…

Last time I saw Akron/Family multi-instrumentalist Dana Janssen, he was coursing across a homemade Slip ‘N Slide made from a large piece of linoleum found by the curb in front of a frat house in London, Ontario. Though the temperature checked in somewhere in the 40s that night after the…

Bowerbirds emerged in 2006 as a back-to-basics act in more than one way: The band’s debut LP, Hymns for a Dark Horse, surveyed a stark loping acoustic sound, enriched by pretty harmonies and an old-fashioned, naturalistic vibe. On that album, the band rhapsodizes about the sweet song of leopard frogs…

While The Pogues may have minted the style, no one has done as much to popularize Celtic-punk as Flogging Molly—and the band’s energetic playing of traditional Irish instrumentation (mandolin, accordion, fiddle) over a pulsing punk beat and the poignant, well-written songs deserve some credit for as much. But the band’s…

One of the wonders of modern music is how there are always emerging new artists capable of using the familiar building blocks of chords, melodies and instrumentation to re-imagine old tropes in exciting new ways. To that end, no, San Francisco’s Girls hasn’t reinvented indie pop; the group simply draws…

Like a healthy tan or acting natural, Ohio trio Times New Viking is an oxymoron. The group is abrasive yet warm, chaotic but crisp, sweet and sour. It’s Modern Lovers consulting Swell Maps while pursued by Dinosaur Jr. TNV couch innocent, straightforward melody within ragged structures sturdy as a condemned…

Just because an artist evolves doesn’t mean his fans will. So, while Chris Palko, aka Cage, may have experienced a personal epiphany that’s taken his music in a new direction, he doesn’t blame his fans for not wanting to come along for the ride. See, the rapper’s latest, Depart From…

Neko Case seizes one’s imagination with a voice so arresting, escape’s all but impossible. And while her rich, smoky alto has long reaped new listeners with its knee-eviscerating power, time’s sharpened her lyrical edge as well. Case’s sketch of girls from different sides of fate’s tracks, “Margaret vs. Pauline,” the…

Frank Turner’s got something to say. It’s apparent in the bite of his words and the gruff roar of his voice. The former U.K. punker led Million Dead for five years before the band dissolved in irreconcilable personal and creative differences. As a result, Turner grabbed an acoustic guitar and…

So you’re a young man with star-studded dreams of Hollywood. What are you doing in drama school? There’s just no need: The Rap Institute of Acting offers a quick, inexpensive avenue into the world of television and movies. And, sure, while it’s true that a little pigmentation helps, even pale-faced…

Los Angeles rapper Busdriver’s rack and pinion elocution corners like an Indy car, reaching speeds that would induce whiplash in his hip-hop peers. He sub-references the pop culture more profusely than Dennis Miller in his heyday, spinning lyrical webs elegant enough to rival Charlotte’s barnyard creations, and as dense as…

It’s hard to say whether Rock Band will result in more musical acts forming at some point down the line. But one would have to assume it would, right? Especially in these times, when the line between geeking out on music and making it is so thin. Surely, the members…

One of the hardest parts of growing up? Being hampered by the expectations your parents and others had for you—they can shackle you to your younger self, even as you’re undergoing rapid change. It’d be great, maybe, if you could just change your name. Too bad that’s not an option…

If someone were to throw TMTS frontman Scott Reitherman an Oscar, it would be for best supporting actor. He and his band sound like a rom-com female lead’s best friend—sweet, funny, endearing and completely non-threatening. It begins with Reitherman’s willowy tenor, which is nearly as airy and mannered as Stuart…