Music
Sparklehorse
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It's a motto that most aptly describes Sparklehorse's latest, a merely competent album that explores little new ground.
Mad Tea Party
If you thought that the twang of country couldn't be combined with tedious sound effects and mild musical enthusiasm, then the monotonous sounds of Mad Tea Party's latest, Big Top Soda Pop, will quickly prove you wrong.
Music Reviews of: The Slats, The Mooney Suzuki, Kasabian, The Avett Brothers, Alexisonfire
The Slats Boom Patrol 4.5 Stars If you're on the prowl for something epic, progressive, and tasteful, don't look to the Slats.
Separation anxiety
After three years of collaborative projects and live albums, Will Oldham returns with his first proper solo album since 2003's Master and Everyone.
Applaud and agree
The second coming of 2005's indie darlings Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is upon us. And while the alt-rock prophets will wait with baited blogs until the January 30 release date, don't expect lead singer and Philadelphia native Alec Ounsworth to indulge their rapture.
All things must pass
Scott Ansill remembers selling 120 copies of Radiohead's Kid A at midnight the night it was released.
Veloci-rapture
A scene in the endearingly obnoxious 2002 movie, The Rules of Attraction, shows a small college's "End of the World" party, and the background tunage is the Rapture's "Out of the Races and onto the Tracks." Shindigs that feature burning wicker men as their main attraction are usually fodder for that Wicca guy you met once (and never again). But with that kind of booty-shakin' song playing in the background, you'd be a fool not to go.
Rock musings
From the time I left campus last spring until June 14, I had Radiohead on my mind. Mine was an obsession that verged on downright mania, transforming my usually tepid opinions into axioms and outright platitudes.
Stroke This
Teenagers filled the Electric Factory on Sunday, April 23 to see a band that hipsters would say is so out they might even be considered pastiche.
Five Bands Team Up To Fight Suicide
In 2001, Louis Posen thought up the Take Action! Tour, rounded up some punk rock bands, and sent them across the country to promote suicide prevention.
Artist to Watch
After opening for indie rock sensations the Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, it was only a matter of time before the Atlanta-via-Athens, Georgia group Snowden got picked up by a prominent independent label.
Easy living the hard way
Aw, it must be so hard for pop stars when they become successful. Today, camera phones and weblogs smudge the line between fan and critic, between celebrity and citizen.
The Philly Music Scene
New York's gone totally yuppie and Los Angeles was never that hip anyway, so what's the independent music scene to do?
Kicking it up a notch
Considering the recent success of Brooklyn-based indie rockers the French Kicks, it's hard to believe that only a few years back they were playing a gig to drunk kids at an unnamed Philly frat house.
Flying Coach
In the wake of Ashlee Simpson's lip-synch debacle on SNL nearly two years ago, Kelefa Sanneh wrote a diatribe against its most strident critics in The New York Times. "The Rap Against Rockism" asked "Could it really be a coincidence that rockist complaints often pit straight white men against the rest of the world?" (A rockist, of course, being a subscriber to the creed of authenticity and a strict guitars-drums-bass worldview.) In other words, is "alternative rock," in all its monikers, yet another white boys' club defined by its own exclusivity? Coachella, a documentary on the six-year-old Indio, California music festival of the same name, incessantly begs such questions by refusing to play to its strengths.
It's Gettin' Heavy
Much of the hype surrounding the Flaming Lips' long-in-the-works 12th album jumped on frontman Wayne Coyne's murmurs about "more guitars." The Oklahoma City veterans' last two albums, 1999's brilliant The Soft Bulletin and 2002's kinda brilliant Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, eschewed the band's tattered punk threads for heady, orchestrated prog.
Philly's main men
Who: Philadelphia's own Man Man Genre: Experimental melodic mayhem Sounds like: If Frank Zappa and Tom Waits had a child out of wedlock Songs to download: "10 lb.
Starring a Band with an Asterisk
Their music has been dubbed new-wave, pop-punk and various combinations thereof, but stellastarr* just likes to call it "rock." Between watching soft-core porns and touring to promote their album, Harmonies for the Haunted, stellastarr*'s pretty busy these days. Street: How would you define your music?
Putting the Woo Back into Wu-tang
Real thugs never die. Unfortunately, they also have trouble staying creative. Ghostface Killah's newest album, Fishscale, is yet another record to emerge from Wu-Tang's prolific machinery.
