Carmen Villain Sleeper (Smalltown Supersound) I am almost sure I bought this album in 1991. While not as high-pitched as Bikini Kill, nor as atonal as Sonic Youth, nor as pop as L7, and certainly not as pretty as Lush, and maybe not as sleepy as Mazzy Star, there is yet an undeniable 1990s quality to...

The last song on Blake Shelton’s new album Based On a True Story (Warner Bros.) is penned by second generation singer-songwriter Thomas Rhett, who has already written for Jason Aldean, Lee Brice, Florida Georgia Line and others. It’s called “Grandaddy’s Gun,” and it becomes a kind of metonymy...

Billy Bragg Tooth & Nail (Essential) Billy Bragg has always been better at compartmentalizing than his reputation as a political songwriter might suggest. This isn’t to say his political work from the late 1970s isn’t iconic; it’s just that his songs about sex, love, romance, and marriage...

The Knife Shaking the Habitual (Mute) Swedish duo The Knife’s new two-disc album Shaking the Habitual is relentless. It manages to be both atmospheric and pop at the same time. It’s beat-heavy, tribal, and persistent, with dark echoes and decaying voice. It doesn’t feel much like 2003’s Deep...

“Fifteen years of rock ‘n’ roll takes a toll on the vocal chords, but I wouldn’t trade a day of it for anything.” – Mark Stuart, 2007 When talk of an Audio Adrenaline Reunion started circulating in early 2012, it got me thinking of the band’s legacy — their place...

Audio Adrenaline Kings & Queens (Fair Trade Services) One thing that happens from time to time is fratricide. I don’t mean this literally. But it’s basically fact that the Ramones and Sex Pistols came along and made Robert Plant and Jimmy Page seem like dinosaurs, and we’ve all...

Ellen Allien LISm (Bpitch Control) I have been reading Albert Camus’s The Plague for the fourth or fifth time. It is one of my all-time favorite books and, given my tendency to slip into a funk in the springtime, on the short-list of books I pick up when I am wallowing in the mire of depression. Let...

The Howling Hex The Best of the Howling Hex (Drag City) I take my son to kindergarten each morning in a twelve-year-old, salvage-titled CR-V that, incidentally, is missing a muffler. It is a noisy fifteen-minute drive. As if to add insult to injury, the stereo only comes out of one of the speakers. Occasionally,...

If you were to picture the stereotype of a music industry executive sitting in his plush office plotting how to promote a smooth, catchy act who will appeal widely and inoffensively to a large swath of the properly calibrated target demographic, and then go to the opposite of whatever spectrum that is,...

Dawn McCarthy & Bonnie “Prince” Billy What the Brothers Sang (Drag City) The Everly Brothers are in a weird position in the current media landscape. They’re caught between being too popular for the obscurantists to love, but not nearly pop enough for the people who reclaim the Monkees as pop...