A year ago I didn’t know Napster from Quicken. Today, with Napster kaput, I don’t know LimeWire from Morpheus from AIMster. The Web’s flush with Napster replacements, and though I can’t really figure out any of them, I’ve tried out a lot of them and even made a few work…

For all the progress they’ve made toward introducing “out” sounds to “in” audiences, what I like most about the bands typically clumped into the “post-rock” scene (the phrase doesn’t really bother me all that much, but I’ll go ahead and use the quotation marks so you don’t think I’m lame)…

To basically everyone who heard it, Shelby Lynne earned the right to call her breakthrough album I Am Shelby Lynne–no matter that it was her sixth full-length and the one to win her the Best New Artist Grammy. The record’s flaxen weave of brutal country confession and elegant soul reserve–essentially,…

I don’t envy those on the frontlines of the neo-soul revolution. Sure, there are perks: fame, fortune, a permanent spot on MTV2, the chance to hang out virtually every day with Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson of the Roots. But think of the demands: On the right you’ve got the neo-traditionalists, those…

Raul Malo’s a nice guy–a real charmer, actually, the kind who bounds into a room and gives you a hearty-ass handshake, asks how you’re doing and then waits to hear the answer–so I’m not really that surprised that he’s not taking the chance I’m giving him to trash Nashville. As…

The greater Dallas-Fort Worth area is quite a haul from Providence, Rhode Island, but on Friday and Saturday night this weekend, you’d be forgiven if you forgot that for a while, so admirably do the two bands headlining Rubber Gloves reimagine Rhode Island School of Design alumni the Talking Heads’…

If the destruction of September 11 took with all the lives and the buildings America’s love affair with irony (as more than a few self-serving media types have opined), why didn’t it also subsume the self-perpetuating infantilization so many twentysomethings in rock bands seem to cling to like a life…

I got over my problems reconciling blink-182’s quasi-libertarian attitude and its major-label affiliation the first time I learned how fond the trio is of big-bosomed porn stars–those women’s services don’t come cheap, so who better to finance the backstage peep show than MCA Records and its multinational parent corporation, Vivendi…

Every so often a record comes along that, no matter how much you want to hate it, you can’t help loving it. This year’s best example of that is Is This It, the maddeningly addictive debut album by the ludicrously hyped New York City band the Strokes. A close second,…

Given the blissfully strung-out nature of the records he makes as Spiritualized–grandiose affairs in which the space-rock cosmos are studded with swirls of free-jazz skronk and warm gusts of gospel-music presence–you wouldn’t expect Jason Pierce to be an amped-up conversationalist, breathlessly regaling you with tales of rock-star debauchery (though they…

If you’ve got the time and/or the money and/or the sanity to keep close tabs on America’s bustling indie-rock underground, you no doubt know that quite a few of the scruffy slouches who run things down there are double-dipping in an increasingly shallow artistic gene pool. Simply put, stagnation’s stinking…

Getting married is probably a trip: If you’re in love, vowing the vows can undo that; if you’re not, the legality may tie the knot. And if you’re either member of the Nathan Larson-Nina Persson estate, it can turn a once-dependable musical template inside out. That little truism seemed to…

For the first time since its 1998 inception, the hard-rocking, shit-talking Family Values Tour isn’t an entirely ironic venture. Sure, the lineup includes adventurously coiffed lunkheads Static-X and hip-hop-admiring lunkheads Linkin Park. But the tour’s two biggest names–nü-metal pilgrims Staind and grunge survivors Stone Temple Pilots–reflect hard rock’s increasingly fractured…

The only chore that goes along with being into the Dismemberment Plan–a Washington, D.C., outfit that in about three years has gone from being the oddity of the remarkably goal-oriented D.C. punk scene to perhaps the most creative underground guitar band in the country–is deciding which to admire more. Do…

Is emo dead? It seems like just yesterday when bands like the Promise Ring, the Get Up Kids and Jimmy Eat World were marrying punk’s wily chug to pop’s slippery shine, crafting songs that didn’t sound like Blink-182’s and were better for you too. But consider: The Ring are now…

When Mick Jagger sang of the girl who “comes in colors everywhere” in “She’s a Rainbow,” a gorgeously loopy ode to a flower-wearing, free-loving beauty on the Stones’ confused 1967 psychedelic experiment Their Satanic Majesties Request, there’s a good chance he was describing a woman he actually knew. But he…

You don’t have to believe it to laugh your face off, but you’ll get more out of the self-titled debut by L.A. comedy duo Tenacious D if you buy their claim that they’re the best band in the world. After you’ve gone through the record, you’ll at least be convinced…

On the first song of his band’s new album, right as Quasi dude Sam Coomes’ cracked-ass organ rides drummer Scott Plouf’s Bonham-heavy backbeat, Idaho native/electric guitar hero/probably cool dad Doug Martsch unwittingly nails the experience of seeing Built to Spill live and in person: “This strange plan is random at…

Though I’ve just had a conversation with singer Todd Baechle in which we took turns saying things, there’s still a couple of questions about the Faint, the Omaha, Nebraska, band he fronts, burning semi-important holes in the back of my mind. For starters, there’s the one to which he moaned…

In the indie-rock underground, the skinny white kids in vintage ringer tees don’t really pick their battles. There’s the arm-crossers and the pocket-stuffers, the bike-riders and the Vespa fans, the tapered-legs and the boot-cuts. And then there’s the kids who fight about music. (Thanks, I’ll be here all week.) The…

African-American pop’s had a wild ride over the past two years. In the Top 40 division, business is booming: Destiny’s Child has virtually remade the best-seller list in its image, selling more records than Jesus and becoming more popular than the Beatles (or whatever). And it’s no accident: Whether or…

As the reasonably dependable member of the fourth estate I take myself for–shit, Dubya sucks–I can see the merit in two recent descriptions of the new Chicago band Owls. One, from the band’s Delaware-based record label, Jade Tree Records, calls the band its town’s “newest art-funk post-rock groove outfit.” Because…