Sheep & Goats returns from an unexpected paternity leave! (The paternity was expected, but the need for leave was not.) If anyone has any wise words about why I should like the new Craig Finn album, or anything else, have at it in the comments! A brief reminder of the grading scale: A “Sheep”...

We’ve been chanting for eight years. Standing shoulder to shoulder as our hair disappeared and our children were born, with sweat dried on our foreheads as we yearned for more of what only you gave us. Of course we knew you would never come. You don’t do encores and we admired you for it. We came...

Eight years ago tonight it was snowing in Denver, CO. I know because I was there, along with thousands of Five Iron Frenzy fans, some who had traveled from around the world. We were there to see the end of something we had loved; to experience it one final time; to put it to rest. In November, Five Iron...

Musician Chris Beland of Bend, Oregon learns that he shares more with his Facebook friend and the front man from the Flying Burrito Brothers than just a love of music… In a hallway outside an auditorium that serves as home to Antioch Church in Bend, Oregon, Chris Beland Chabot presses his spine...

If you’re not familiar with the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, beware: what follows contains heresy and spoilers, and I’m not sure which is worse. As a straight white 30-something Christian, I’m required by law to be a U2 fan. Over the summer my wife and I cheerfully paid a large sum of money...

Does Christmas music make anyone else crazy? At a certain time of year, we just can’t escape it. From Black Friday to White Christmas, it is all a distraction, and the soundtrack to the season seeps everywhere. Love them or hate them, these songs have little to nothing to do with the original Christmas....

I’ve heard it said that Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose was, and still is, an angry, angry man. I have no reason to doubt it. There simply is no denying that they literally burst forth into the nation’s consciousness with a vengeance in late 1987, and for the next five-to-six years,...

We have a Christmas tradition around these parts.  Every year, we re-post Burnside’s most popular article of all time: “The Abominable ‘O Holy Night’”.  Along with the Advent Conspiracy, this insanely awful little diddy gets us in the Christmas spirit. The Abominable O...

  “I have 46 days worth of music on my laptop and I haven’t bought an album since 1998” -some kid I roomed with at summer camp in 2007 Can I just say that we are finally here, and it wasn’t worth it? There was a time when I dreamed of this, sure. I still remember bootlegging tapes...

Gungor Ghosts Upon the Earth (Brash) Of all the records that were released this year, this one ranked pretty high on my list of “most anticipated.” 2009′s Beautiful Things was such a gosh-wow amazing LP for so many reasons, I was curious to see if Gungor could put together another album of...