Louder Now, the third album by Amityville, New York emo kids Taking Back Sunday, isn’t really “louder now.” In fact, I’m tempted to say that it might actually be more sugary than their first two albums – it’s riddled with hints of pleasing a younger, more pop-driven audience. Not that Taking Back Sunday’s earlier releases were shrouded with cryptic, brooding, off-center hymns, but there was a sense of originality and that genuine feel I got when I heard those older songs that just …

For a lot of girls, there is always that one best friend they can count on. The friend who you’ve had since at least high school, who knows everything about you. The friend you’ve done really stupid things with; the friend who, even in the midst of a giant storm of annoyances, you automatically called when everything was going wrong; and the one friend (who you aren’t fucking) that you can stay up all night with and not get grumpy. So imagine a day …

Last month, Detroit rock supergroup The Raconteurs released their highly anticipated debut album, Broken Boy Soldiers, to widespread public acclaim and a critical response that ranged from middling to ecstatic – including a decidedly middling review from our own Megan Giddings. But for those of us in the know, the idea of a Motor City answer to Blind Faith was never quite as enticing as the hysterical reports from NME had made the Raconteurs’ gestation period sound. That’s because we’d already heard …

You’ve been reading about Stax all week. You’ve learned about Booker T. & The MGs, and a bunch of monolithic icons you’ve probably never heard of. It’s fascinating stuff, but admittedly a lot of information to absorb. Rance Allen is yet another monolith. He’s important! He shattered boundaries! Why should you maintain interest?
Because Rance Allen sings disco gospel. Music does not come any more awesome than that.
Allen’s backing groups play that wonderful ’70s soul sound, halfway between disco and Motown. They attack most variations …

Johnnie Taylor may be largely unknown now, but his influence is far-reaching, helping to form the sound of artists such as Otis Redding, Al Green, and Sam & Dave. For Taylor’s Stax Profiles collection, former News frontman Huey Lewis has compiled some of the best selections from the singer’s nearly six-decade career, covering a wide range of the genres in which Taylor experimented: R&B, blues, soul, and disco, among others.
Taylor was discovered by Sam Cooke in the early 1950s, and would later replace …

Of all the overused, overemphasized, overrated terms in modern indie music, “honesty” must be close to the top. An unfortunate outgrowth of the 1980s’ integrity-obsessed first wave of alternative rock (in the same way that gonorrhea can be an unfortunate outgrowth of sex), “honesty” has served as many a wannabe critic’s highest standard of quality, its absence the cruelest and most demeaning of epithets.
Take a perfectly good, kick-ass rock’n’roll band, who maybe just happen to like a little semi-ironic Spandex in their stage gear, …

I’ve said it once; I’ve said it a million times – there is an art to releasing an interesting and good live album. Look at the Reigning Sound’s recent Live at Goner Records; that record is absolutely necessary for any Reigning Sound fan, as well as anyone who has wanted to get into the band. It does a fantastic job of capturing the rock and roll howl of Greg Cartwright and the high-energy sounds of the Reigning Sound in concert. But enough about one …

Ladies, ladies, ladies…when will you ever learn? Rock singers are appealing, sure: they sweat and they strut and they wear their jeans skin-tight (the better to accentuate their stuffed crotches). Maybe they’re even a little sensitive, too, with their liner note dedications and their power ballads. But once the break-up comes around — and come it will — you’ll be spending the rest of your life hearing about what a bitch you were, and it’s safe to say that no amount of free backstage …

Okay, seriously: if anybody out there ever expected to hear a sitar on a Soledad Brothers album, raise your hand. Or better yet, don’t – because if you did see that coming, you’re either lying, or you have no clue who the Soledad Brothers are in the first place. This is, in short, the last band in the world you’d expect to throw traditional Indian instrumentation into the mix. Saxophone, sure, or wailing harmonica; maybe even a horn section now and again, but let’s …

Skillet Gilmore is probably living his dream right now. He’s playing in a group which often sounds a lot like Skillet’s old band, Whiskeytown – right down to the guest appearances by his fellow alumna (and wife) Caitlin Cary – and yet there are no hints that Patty Hurst Shifter frontman E. Chris Smith can be quite the alcoholic tyrant young Ryan Adams was throughout the dark times of that band’s existence. In fact, the biggest asset of Too Crowded on the Losing End …