These Canadian alt-country vets put into practice one of that scene’s most worthwhile suppositions: that there’s fertile creative territory to be tilled by mating vintage country’s twang with more modern sounds. In the Junkies’ case, it’s the slurred, appropriately druggy atmospherics of the Velvet Underground; the cover of “Sweet Jane”…

After you get a load of the Dicks With Attitude Tour–or Ozzfest, as it’s also known–head to the Gypsy Tea Room on Wednesday night for a counteracting dose of these ladies’ respective mojos. Liz Phair didn’t quite muster the high-gloss sheen of her self-titled disc on tour earlier this year,…

Tanya Donelly’s done time as a Throwing Muse and a Breeder, and as the front woman of her successful alt-pop power trio Belly; basically, if you need someone to score the introspective documentary you’re making about growing up as an intelligent young woman in a world not made for them,…

The music biz demands a lot from its ranks: Confuse fish with chicken for laughs! Put your hair in cornrows even though you’re a puffy white man! Adapt to changing styles and trends so 14-year-old girls with $4 allowances will legally download your album over three weeks! I’m not sure…

I have this theory that the reason so many foreign films capture the hearts of Americans who profess to hate “pap” like Stepmom is because foreign filmmakers don’t share their American counterparts’ fear of straight-up sentiment, so their films hedge far fewer bets and therefore connect more viscerally with viewers…

This summer do your part to reverse the tide of American cultural imperialism: Buy this young Welsh screamo band’s full-length debut and blast it the next time you feel like allowing Linkin Park to soothe the pain caused by your mom’s not getting the breakfast cereal you really wanted. The…

In the recording studio, producer Daniel Lanois imbues material by his clients–U2, Bob Dylan and Peter Gabriel among them–with a warm, womblike glow that creates the illusion of intimacy out of a careful wrangling of modern technology. He does the same thing on his own solo albums: If last year’s…

Juana Molina is an Argentinean singer/guitarist who also happens to be a well-known comic actor in her native country. When she plays live she allows her long brown hair to hang in her face while she picks simple figures on her guitar and overlays them with precise vocal lines; her…

These high-octane, high-attitude garage rockers are like the version of the Hives no one’s heard of: They’ll blow up your skirt in concert expending the energy of 14 or 15 lesser bands, then tell you how lucky you were to see them and how courteous they were to be seen…

Don’t call it a comeback; they’ve been here for years. No, really: Even if they’ve spent most of this century making kids records, writing (occasionally Grammy-winning) TV theme songs and being the subject of entertaining documentaries, They Might Be Giants haven’t forgotten their first love: the kooky pop-rock with which…

Last year in these pages I called New York-based roots-rocker Jesse Malin a “solipsistic fuckface.” (Actually, I only said he could come off like one, and only a lot of the time at that.) In the very unlikely event that Malin read those words on a swing through town (or…

I can understand listening to Jessica Simpson’s music: “Sweetest Sin” manages to be simultaneously trashy and classy, and the saccharine in her new version of “Take My Breath Away” could rot Tom Cruise’s teeth. (Incidentally, consider how much effort it would require to actually take away Simpson’s breath. I mean,…

Kudos to Diana Krall–or her manager, or booking agent, or publicist, or whoever–for taking this New York-based group out on the road this summer instead of one of the 657 young crooners currently vying for a bit of that filthy Next Norah Jones lucre. Ollabelle, who always refuses cash from…

So, yeah, Spider-Man is one of the more realistic comic-book heroes fighting crime today: He lives in New York, not Gotham City or Metropolis; he’s motivated by rage and guilt, not a heart of gold; he’s a nerd, not a stud. Plus, his superpowers derive from a bug bite. Still,…

In a culture bombarded by ever-shortening bits of information, Múm offers plenty to attract your overtaxed attention: They’re from Iceland! They record albums in remote lighthouses! Until recently they included a pair of twin sisters whose singing voices resemble those of 6-year-old tree nymphs! Yet put on one of Múm’s…

As D’Angelo, the neo-soul Harry Houdini, looks less and less likely to get around to making a follow-up to his 2000 genre benchmark Voodoo, prudent R&B fans might do well to undertake a search for some other slow-burning stud with a honey-baked croon. This North Carolina native’s résumé is as…

The impressively résuméd indie-rock guitarist Jimmy LaValle–he’s spent time with Tristeza, the Black Heart Procession and GoGoGo Airheart–has released a handful of iffy solo records as the Album Leaf, a name that’s basically provided cover while he noodled in his bedroom like Enya in a denim jacket. To make In…

On her new In Exile Deo, professional indie babe Juliana Hatfield makes a serious move away from the scrappy guitar-pop of her college-radio past toward the mature songcraft of the Aimee Mann set. You know what this means: slower tempos, lots of keyboards, a handful of metaphors so painful I’ll…

Things didn’t quite work out for Rooney the way they’d probably hoped. The ultra-hyped L.A. power-pop outfit’s self-titled debut was supposed to put them in the same celeb-tested, fan-approved orbit as singer Robert Carmine’s brother Jason Schwartzman’s old band Phantom Planet. Instead, they’ve been touring the peppy-if-not-adequately-poppy record incessantly since…

Perma-spiked Fredericksen’s best known for his role as second guitarist in California punk heavies Rancid, but tonight he hits town to preview stuff from next month’s Viking, the second album he’s made with his aptly handled Bastards. Expect sound and fury, with an occasional fistful of righteousness. Show up early…

As usual, it’s a pretty good time for a visit from Patti Smith, the punk poetess with a song for every cultural and geopolitical shake-up the world can throw at itself. Trampin’, her ninth album, finds Smith musing on war and peace and its avatars; if it gets a little…

The Catheters display an impressive disregard for the tidy rules of punctuation on their just-released third album, Howling … It Grows and Grows!!!. (Yep, all those exclamation points are theirs, as is that mysteriously placed ellipsis, which they must’ve picked up in its original package from run-on devotee Fiona Apple.)…