It shouldn’t take an especially active reader to see that the Modern Pea Pod tends not to cover music that gets played on the radio. And I’m not gonna lie: part of that comes down to our own personal tastes. But another reason why we don’t usually talk to bands who get radio airplay is because the bands who get radio airplay don’t usually want to talk to us. I mean, seriously, if you were 50 Cent, James Blunt, Red Hot Chili Peppers or …

There are few bands in recent underground music history who command – and deserve – as much respect as Mudhoney. Survivors of the late-’80s/early-’90s Seattle explosion, singer Mark Arm, guitarist Steve Turner, drummer Dan Peters, and bassist Matt Lukin (replaced in 2001 by Guy Maddison) have been at it since 1988, when their seminal EP Superfuzz Bigmuff accidentally helped to father grunge with its blend of fuzz-drenched Stooges dynamics and ironically detached punk nihilism. In the years since that debut, they’ve plowed an …

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 …

Don’t get me wrong: we at the Modern Pea Pod love all music, regardless of such phonily objective qualifiers as influence and mass appeal. But when it comes to someone like Wanda Jackson, lines have to be drawn. Wanda Jackson is a living legend: not just the first woman to achieve infamy as a rock and roll singer, but one of the most vital musicians — male or female — ever to grace the genre.
She emerged as a teenage country singer in mid-1950s Oklahoma, …

The Gossip have always been in a league of their own – after all, how many other feminist indie rockers could you name with roots in small-town Arkansas? But with the release of their third and latest album, it’s going to be time for all of us lazy critics to pack up those “White Stripes meet Sleater Kinney” references for good. Standing in the Way of Control is the work of a slicker, more streamlined Gossip: angular and danceable enough to sit comfortably next …

If you’re from the Detroit area, you may not have heard it here first…but the Hard Lessons are about two hair’s breadths from becoming a fully fledged household name. With a smoking debut album, Gasoline, and a red-letter 2005 under their vintage white belts – not to mention the single best live show in the metro area – if these kids aren’t the next big thing, then I’d like to see who in the hell is. But before all yer little indie-cred senses start tingling, let me put you …

Vivian Sarratt and Edmond Hallas are a married couple. They have an apartment and a cat in New York City. They tour in a station wagon. When I called to speak to Vivian, they were just sitting down to watch a movie together. Vivian Sarratt and Edmond Hallas, a.k.a. Mommy & Daddy, are a married couple and a rock band…but they ain’t exactly Wings either. On the contrary, Mommy & Daddy deal in sexually charged, bass-heavy electro-rock which ought to please fans of Death From Above 1979, the Kills and …

Sounds from Thee Underground:
No Fun Records’s Annual Garage Rawk Showcase
At the Blind Pig, Ann Arbor
It’s easy to forget that the Stooges, perhaps the single most legendary of the proto-punk “Detroit” bands of the late ’60s, actually hailed from Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. No Fun Records, Ann Arbor’s only label specializing in redline-raw rock’n’roll music, has not forgotten. Sounds from Thee Underground is their annual showcase: with a roster to die for (including hometown faves the Avatars and the Hard Lessons), interlude music by WCBN DJ Brian Tomsic and MC duties …