Kurt Vile 'Smoke Ring for My Halo'

Kurt Vile has rock's most believable sneer. When on his fourth album the Philly singer-songwriter confesses to being "a puppet to the man" and that his life's been "one long running gag," his voice slithers into every corner of defiance and resignation, earning your trust with that insistent lip-curl of brutal everydude humility. Having inhaled...

Read More

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks: Tigers

...

Read More

Marvin Gaye What's Going On [40th Anniversary Edition]

Marvin Gaye submitted a version of the most important single of his career, "What's Going On", to Motown Records in the summer of 1970. Over the previous seven years, the relationship between the singer and his label was contentious yet fruitful; gritty uptempo songs like "Stubborn Kind of Fellow" and "Hitch Hike" were...

Read More

GIRLS:"Father,Son,Holy Ghost"

We may eventually remember 2011 as the Year of Retro. Critic Simon Reynolds' recent book on the subject tapped into a feeling a lot of people had but couldn't quite pin down: In the age of the limitless archive, the relationship between new artists and their influences are changing. Since the retirement of LCD Soundsystem, San Francisco's Girls, who...

Read More

EMA

Formerly of California's nerve-fraying, positive-feedback crew Gowns, Erika M. Anderson finds more catharsis on her first solo release, Past Lives Martyred Saints. Her shambolic, breathless, damaged, nakedly confessional poetry is a drugged-out fever dream; a dizzying trip amplified when her voice is struggling to compete with suffocating drones and prismatic guitar noise...

Read More

Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire de Melody Nelson

A deluxe edition of Serge Gainsbourg’s 1971 masterpiece, Histoire de Melody Nelson, will be released on November 7 and is set to feature unreleased material including alternate takes and a new DVD documentary. Histoire de Melody Nelson will be available as a Super Deluxe 2CD/2LP/DVD Limited Edition, a Deluxe Edition (2CD/DVD) and a Vinyl Picture Edition.A film based on Histoire de Melody Nelson (entitled Melody) was made for French TV in 1971 and was directed by Jean Christophe Averty. It stars Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin in the lead roles. And...

Read More

Damn Dogs

...

Read More

Smith Westerns:"Dye it Blonde"

Smith Westerns have cleaned up nicely. Just over a year ago, the Chicago foursome were of the strictly "lo-fi" persuasion, stirring up hot, filthy garage-rock candy out of Marc Bolan and Beatles signifiers. It was youthful music in feeling and sound-- their noisy full-length debut was recorded while they were still in high school-- but the remarkable...

Read More

Eminem: Prescription drug Ambien ‘wiped out five years of my life’

The rapper also says that the sedative contributed to a four year long stretch of writer’s block. Eminem says that the pills were ‘wiping out brain cells’. He added:…a lot of my memory is gone. I don't know if you've ever taken Ambien, but it's kind of a memory-eraser. That shit wiped out five years of my life. People will tell me stories, and it's...

Read More

Sonic Youth

"I Love You Golden Blue" Throughout the band's major label heyday in the '90s, Gordon and Moore's lyrics didn't dive into topics of domesticity or romance — Gordon opted to write lyrics with a feminist bent ("Shoot," "Little Trouble Girl," "Panty Lies"), while Moore's tunes grew increasingly fixed on the political ("Youth Against Fascism"), the musical ("Theresa's Sound World," "Screaming Skull"), or the straight-up inscrutable ("Starfield Road"). That changed on 2004's Sonic Nurse, particularly with Gordon's devastating ballad "I Love You...

Read More

Review of the day

Feist'Metals' Polishing 
the Apple: The high priestess of artful
 pop chanteuses invites us 
to bask in her subtle glow Spin Rating7 of 10It seems a little weird to call Leslie Feist an elder stateswoman of anything -- she's 35, this is her fourth full-length -- but for a second, let's just say she is, and let's call her sphere of influence...

Read More

Bon Iver

Bon Iver Bon Iver (Jagjaguwar) On his 2008 debut For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver's Justin Vernon delivered spare, emotionally-charged folk tunes that chronicled a messy break-up. The album earned him no shortage of fans — most notably, Kanye West, who featured the elusive Wisconsin-based singer on last year's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy....

Read More

Smith Westerns

 On their second CD, the Chicago teenagers teamed with producer Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beach House), who adds glossy production to the group's fuzzed-out garage-rock sound. The Smith Westerns haven't shied away from their love of Bowie and T. Rex; on Dye It Blonde, the boys end up worshipping their heroes in the most devout way possible — by trying to top them. ...

Read More

Sonic Youth

A band shot by Dave Markey around the time 1991: The Year Punk Broke arriv...

Read More

NME‘s 150 Best Tracks Of The Past 15 Years

NME‘s website is just now marking its 15th anniversary, a sure sign that, if nothing else, the British music magazine figured out that the internet meant something before most people did. To celebrate, they’ve published their list of the 150 best songs of the last 15 years. The list is heavy on the Brit-rock that NME understandably favors, and...

Read More