Rainer Maria
Rainer Maria Catastrophe Keeps Us Together [4/5] Rainer Maria’s music has invited plenty of adjectives, but “muscular” hasn’t been among them–until now. Tightening down their melodies, boosting their volume controls and all but jettisoning their musical trademark–the fragile call-and-response vocals of bassist Caithlin De Marrais and guitarist Kyle Fischer–the band sound bigger and more self-assured...
Grandaddy
Grandaddy Just Like The Fambly Cat [4/5] Grandaddy’s music has always sounded like pop filtered through a daydream: Nothing is quite as it seems; everything feels just a little askew. Sadly, it’s finally time to wake up, as frontman/braintrust Jason Lytle has announced that Grandaddy’s fifth album, Just Like The Fambly Cat, is also the...
Elefant
Elefant The Black Magic Show [4/5] Confidence–along with smart, brooding romanticism–is one thing Elefant have never lacked; the critical praise heaped on the NYC quartet’s 2003 debut album, Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid, proves as much. But on their follow-up, The Black Magic Show, Elefant defy even their own poised reputation, sounding as self-assured as a...
The Dresden Dolls
The Dresden Dolls Yes, Virginia [5/5] No other lyricist in rock conveys the sexual spectrum’s dirty little complexities like the Dresden Dolls’ Amanda Palmer. On the duo’s second album, Yes, Virginia, the singer/keyboardist purrs in anticipation of the day’s “First Orgasm,” uses double entendres to remind us that “sex will change you” (“Sex Changes”) and...
Built To Spill
Built To Spill You In Reverse [4/5] In 2002, when Built To Spill singer/guitarist/founder Doug Martsch released his pretty-much-perfect slide-blues solo album, Now You Know, he unwittingly set the bar so fucking high for BTS’ follow-up to 2001’s Ancient Melodies Of The Future that a less-inventive musician might’ve just quit to avoid risking the abject...
Mark Hoppus: Come To My Pod
MARK HOPPUS may just be the busiest man on the planet. Between his hectic studio schedule (both as a member of post-Blink-182 group Plus 44, with Blink’s Travis Barker and Get The Girl’s Carol Heller, and as a producer/collaborator with some of your favorite bands), his wildly successful Atticus clothing line and a record label...
Smoking Popes: Need You Around
In the days before there was an Alkaline Trio (and seemingly an epoch before Fall Out Boy), SMOKING POPES were Chicago’s premier pop-punk outfit, stamping their own personality on a well-established genre. The band split up in 1998, but their memory lived on in the hearts of those who helped fill up Chicago’s Metro for...