The post-Norah Jones phenomenon of standards albums by singers who don’t usually sing them has yielded the occasional alternate-universe proposition: Cyndi Lauper doing “La Vie en Rose”? Hey, middle-aged mothers just wanna have fun, too. Country vet Merle Haggard isn’t the least likely artist to rip through the Great American…

John Lennon disappeared before most people had him figured out; compare what you know of him to your ideas about Paul McCartney, who’s given us over two decades to understand him with goofy Christmas songs, bizarro pop-star collaborations and the occasional crappy solo album. So you’d think this set of…

This two-disc set from Seattle’s greatest prog-pop band after Queensrche will undoubtedly be overshadowed by Nirvana’s With the Lights Out–which makes sense, as Pearl Jam was overshadowed by Nirvana when both bands actually existed, too. But if Rearviewmirror feels less momentous than Nirvana’s hit-and-miss scrap heap, it’s no faint praise…

The only real thrill of Under Blackpool Lights, the Detroit blues-garage act’s first DVD, is getting a closer-than-normal look at the freaky faces Jack White makes when he’s singing. Over the course of these 26 tunes, filmed on a typically grainy stock at Blackpool’s cavernous Empress Ballroom, the singer-guitarist scowls,…

When you consider that he’s titled previous albums God’s Son and Nastradamus, it’s not terribly surprising to find that the latest by New York rapper Nas is a double disc called Street’s Disciple whose cover features the MC proudly occupying Jesus’ seat at a modestly bling-crusted Last Supper. Once you…

On his self-titled 2002 debut as Citizen Cope, Clarence Greenwood (former DJ with backpack-rap stars Basehead) made like a more granola Everclear: a hip-hop dude dabbling in folk-soul melodies and rudimentary acoustic-guitar strumming. On The Clarence Greenwood Recordings, his tellingly titled follow-up, Cope reverses the equation: Now he sounds like…

Gwen Stefani’s obsession with material wealth borders on the pathological on Love, Angel, Music, Baby, the No Doubt front woman’s solo debut: She has her “million-dollar contract,” she wants to “clean out Vivienne Westwood in my Galliano gown,” she’s “luxurious like Egyptian cotton.” This is tiresome rhetoric, particularly from someone…

Since We Last Spoke, indie-rap mixmaster RJD2’s latest, proves there’s room for advancement in instrumental beatscaping post-DJ Shadow. RJ veers away from Shadow’s encroaching-doom atmosphere and heads toward an inviting vision of funk-rock as fixated on texture as groove. What the album doesn’t do is necessarily guarantee a good time…

Here’s the second-best thing about Scott Hoffman, the bass player and co-songwriter at the center of New York’s Scissor Sisters: He’s part of a band that makes delicious dance-pop as vibrant musically as it is culturally. The five-piece group’s self-titled debut is a confident romp through a glittery Times Square…

Here’s a creative indie-rock triple bill worth rescheduling an evening dedicated to reading old Pitchfork reviews. Headlining locals the pAper chAse you already know; God Bless Your Black Heart, the Dallas band’s Kill Rock Stars debut, finds front man John Congleton perfecting his Nick Cave-for-the-Dickies-set steez; agitated Slint fans, this…

Though I can’t be alone in wishing the Hives had used the mainstream appeal they won with Veni Vidi Vicious to write songs with the Matrix or do a duet with Lindsay Lohan or get Andre 3000 in for a collabo, the Swedish garage-rockers didn’t do any of those things…

Listen up, rockists, mythologists, screenwriters and future biographers: With the Lights Out, the four-disc boxed set that Nirvana fans have been waiting for since April 8, 1994, does not definitively prove that Nirvana was touched by greatness from the flannel-shirted get-go. But that’s what scrap-heap retrospectives are supposed to do,…

L.A.’s Earlimart sounds like a lightweight version of Californian psych-pop bards Grandaddy, which is not an official slight. Grandaddy guitarist Jim Fairchild is a new addition to the band, and he and front man Aaron Espinoza co-produced Treble & Tremble, Earlimart’s new album. The disc’s title is way apt: tinny…

It’s Friday night in Manhattan, and though the line snaking down Broadway between West 52nd and 53rd might appear to be for tonight’s performance of Bombay Dreams, this crowd isn’t exactly Andrew Lloyd Weber’s demographic. There are a handful of bemused-looking parent types, but they’re wildly outnumbered by young women…

Wet From Birth, the latest album by Nebraskan electro-goth pin-ups the Faint, doesn’t feature the reappropriated ’80s synth-pop melodies 2001’s Danse Macabre did. Instead, it finds the band exploring the endless possibilities of studio texture, which can portend a night of no-fun noodling onstage; luckily the band’s live show remains…

I can admit it: I misjudged the Donnas. For their first several records I wrote off the Bay Area quartet as a cheap joke wrapped up in a cheaper gimmick: jailbait junior high girls playing black-leather garage rock about staying up all night and turning 21 and riding in cars…

These New York-based indie dabblers aren’t nearly as obnoxious as you might fear: Yes, they are two American rock guys–guitarist Chris Root and keyboardist Jon Marshall Smith–and a Brazilian singer named Juju Stulbach, which sounds like the premise of a shitty sketch comedy, or the foundation of an ad for…

Kentucky’s VHS or Beta are perhaps the least likely of the new dance-rock scene’s emergent stars: They’re from Kentucky, for starters, a locale far outside the normal orbit of New York’s hipster elite. They’ve also cultivated a devoted following among jam-band types attracted to their improvisational, noodle-happy live show. And,…

Once upon a time Matthew Sweet made an album called Girlfriend, and we saw that it was good: the precise midpoint between studio-guy musical fussiness and radio-fan pop tunefulness, the kind of record you can blast for the choruses and imbibe through headphones for the guitar solos. Sweet’s done loads…

The British post-punk act Mclusky has learned a lot from Steve Albini, the Chicago noise-rock provocateur who recorded the group’s last two albums. For one, they’ve picked up where Albini’s on-again/off-again power trio Shellac regularly leave off, layering steel-wool guitar fuzz over architecturally precise bass-and-drums grooves as heavy as an…

I don’t mean to make light of his hardship, but breaking up with Claire Danes might turn out to be a good thing for former Australian teen-pop pin-up Ben Lee: On a new split seven-inch released by his new label Ten Fingers (at present an imprint of the super-hip Hollywood…

Here’s a challenge to workhorse producer/sideman/composer Jon Brion: For your next film-score gig, take on something by Wes Craven, or Antoine Fuqua, or the guy who directed Seed of Chucky–basically any movie that isn’t a talky, middlebrow think piece about the wondrous fragility of the human condition. Thanks to his…