In 2024, The Velvet Underground and Nico is the most relevant album released in the 1960s. It is ground zero for indie rock, dream pop, shoegaze, noise rock, and a million other guitar-based genres of music. Brian Eno is quoted saying that the album sold 10,000 copies and spawned 10,000 bands. It was probably the […]
The 2020s has seen a raft of good alt/post-punk music from Dry Cleaning to Squid to Wet Leg. Porridge Radio’s dueling lead vocals over droning organ and spiky guitar feels like The Velvet Underground revisited, but their use of repetition feels new to me. Somehow singer Dana Margolin wrings more emotion out of saying a […]
Pitchfork kinda fucked these guys by giving this album a 10/10 when it was released in 2002. They could never live up to the hype. But they are a really great rock band, and their mix of Sonic Youth’s squall and The Who’s bombast makes for a pretty killer, noisy indie rock album. It’s not […]
A month or two ago, one of the best power trios of the 2000s Screaming Females broke up. This album, produced by my guy Steve Albini, splits the difference between the more anarchic garage noise of their first few albums and the more refined poppier stuff from their last few. It also has a banger […]
Stereolab really has nothing to do with Heck Reckoners, but they’re a vibe and this is one of the chillest grooviest albums of all time.
Speedy Ortiz is a literate, girl-led version of 90s dude-y indie rock.
Happy Valentine’s Day! This is the second album from X, the best band to come from LA’s punk scene in the 1980s (fight me, Black Flag). X wrote literate songs, often sung in slightly off-key unison by their dueling male and female lead singers, supported by guitar work that proved punk didn’t need to be […]
Savages cut two very good punk rock/post-punk albums in the 2010s. “Silence Yourself” is their first. Instrumentally, they’re probably closest to what we’ve been doing. (IMHO, we’ve more range though.)
This was my favorite album of last year. Like us, they write a lot of story songs with concrete imagery — though unlike Kylee, Karley Hartzman is kind of all over the place with her phrasing and melody. At their core, Wednesday is a country band with more effects pedals.
Here’s the album of the week. It’s a bit of a basic bitch pick because it’s like Shoegaze 101, but it is the most important and best shoegaze album of all time. Crushing guitars, ethereal vocals, effects pedals. The soft/loud dynamic defined 90s alt rock, but My Bloody Valentine did both at the same time. […]