Ah, samplers: the mixtapes of the business world. Take a group of albums, pluck a few highlights, then throw them all on a disc in the hope that John Q. Public will get interested enough to buy your stuff. A lot of labels release small samplers with minimal packaging and tracks to generate hype; it’s a good way to get people to hear your music and learn what your label’s all about. All Saints is a lot like that, but they …

As buzz-generating first singles go, the Subways’ “Rock & Roll Queen” was pretty tepid. Sure, it got a spot on the soundtrack for The OC (what hasn’t?) and a “Single of the Month” promotion on iTunes, but its overbearing alterna-rawk production and insipid lyrics carried the suspicious whiff of industry hype rather than genuine word-of-mouth acclaim. For this listener, at least, the question was not “where did these guys come from?” but “who the hell actually listens to this?” – hardly the response, …

Quick! Name your favorite Sub Pop artists. Do I hear Wolf Parade? Iron & Wine? The Postal Service? How about Kelley Stoltz? Let’s put it this way: if your answer to that last question was “who’s Kelley Stoltz?”, then you’re seriously missing out. Stoltz, a suburban Detroit transplant turned San Francisco power pop wizard, might not have the high profile and the Pitchfork appeal of his trendier labelmates; but what he does have, and what is arguably more important, is a thoroughly solid …

I have never been to Australia, and perhaps it’s for the best. From listening to Australian pop acts such as the Go-Betweens and the Lucksmiths, I have formed an idea that their home country is a beautiful sunlit place where people happily burst into richer than homemade chocolate cake pop melodies without warning. No one even notices that they are all singing instead of speaking, and even the kangaroos stop whatever they’re doing when this happens and begin bouncing along to the music. …

I am a twenty-something male who takes perhaps a bit too much joy in his hair. My stylist of choice at my favorite salon is named Chuck, and he does fantastic work; which, frankly speaking, he’d better, considering the sum I pay him. The whole situation is fantastically stylish and absurdly, yet delightfully, posh…but no matter how I cut it, I am faced with a rather unsettling and inescapable fact. I am a murderer.
This is a rather recent revelation, and one that I credit …

From the forthcoming album 3121
(NPG Music Club)
In the summer of 2004, I saw Prince on two of his stops at the Palace of Auburn Hills. He was touring in support of his much-vaunted comeback album, Musicology, and the set list was tooled to match that record’s mood: heavy on hits, often in medley form, with few idiosyncrasies and a “family-friendly” veneer on even the notorious ’80s material. Hence when performing “I Feel For You,” Prince changed the words “it’s mainly a physical thing” to …

It would be in the best interests of both writer and reader to get our ground facts straight here: you are about to read a review of an album of jazz interpretations of classic and semi-classic pop songs, drawing heavily from the nineteen-nineties, played by a vibraphone, piano, and bass trio of three anonymous guys, one of whom happens to be responsible for 1998’s alternative-rock radio favorite “Closing Time.”
To their credit, publicists for The New Standards’ self-titled album readily acknowledge all of this.
There’s …

2006 marks Belle & Sebastian’s tenth year as a recording and performing unit — and if that makes some of you indie kids from the last generation feel old, then imagine how young I feel. Back when If You’re Feeling Sinister was making big ripples in Tweeland, I was more concerned with Super Nintendo games and the latest Aerosmith cassette. Horn rims? Fuck that shit, I was still wearing Batman T-shirts. All of which might go toward explaining why I prefer the new, …

The Hellacopters are asking for it. Here they are in 2006, still playing the same hooky, unabashedly retro sound they perfected with 1999′s Grande Rock. Face it, these Nordic hell-raisers’ approach hasn’t aged a day since 1972, let alone that nearly decade-old record: take two parts Cheap Trick, one part MC5 and one part KISS, stir it together with a neo-garage rocker’s sense of reverence, then airlift the whole damned concoction to the frosty North, and you have the Hellacopters. It’s a formula …

To your average music enthusiast, Cat Stevens is the man who wrote half of the screenplay to Harold and Maude with his song “If You Want to Sing Out Sing Out,” and then just sort of freaked out. To some of us, though, Cat Stevens isn’t just a pop-minded religious zealot – he’s our pop-minded religious zealot.
Cat Stevens albums were big players in the Horvath household’s music selection in the 1980s because they were a lot safer than listening to Madonna, and he’s one …