Okay, I give. Things have been far too cute and nonsensical over in Canada ever since the Unicorns’ 2003 Stateside heyday with the release of Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone. I didn’t always feel that way. The Unicorns’ album was a piece of sweet and silly pop taffy, but even their disintegration was a joy, because it lead to the formation of Islands and the creation of one of this year’s best records, Return to the Sea. However, while I can …

Springtime Can Kill You is the musical equivalent to an old, black and white film. A beautiful, troubled, lonely woman flickers and wanders through the screen, encountering men, horses, dust, and even more trouble as she stumbles through a vast desert. Sometimes, she is all-consuming; her voice thunders, sounds, and wails with all the power of wagon wheels clomping towards California. Other times, she is a far-away dot; a moving speck with gleaming hair carried away by the Americana-tinged winds of a vast, …

Lately, it seems like everywhere an indie kid goes, they can find a freak-folk record. The music which was once associated with jugs, long beards, and county fair performances to which a misguided parent dragged you, has suddenly become strangely hip. Yet this growing interest in the freakier side of folk music rarely extends to the straight Americana and world-based folk from whence it came. Hopefully, the latest release from Tompkins Square, Imaginational Anthem, Vol. 2, will help shake off some more …

Perhaps it’s clichéd to include the “indie Mariachi band” in a CDs of summer series. But, Calexico deserves some attention aside from being the band that recently collaborated with Iron & Wine for the much acclaimed In the Reins EP. Calexico has been making Southwestern-flavored alternative country music for sixteen years now, as any hardcore fan (or All Music Guide) could easily tell you. Discovering their records from their most accessible, this year’s Garden Ruin, and tracing back to 2003′s red-orange …

You know who keeps summer real? Not those fucking hipsters dressed all in black, smoking on the street corner. And not the moms with their too-tanned busts and too-low tank tops, either. It’s not even the perfect people with their perfect bodies lounging by the side of the local beach. No, no, no… It’s the kids running through sprinklers, catching fireflies, and painting their mouths blue, red, and green with a steady diet of freezer pops. It’s kids like 12-year-old Asya and 10-year-old …

There are some genres of music that seem to grow in appeal during certain seasons. For me, melancholy-tinged indie pop (The Lucksmith’s Naturaliste, for example) is the flavor of autumn. Garage rock is usually best seasoned with a dash of snow and a lot of grey clouds. And what is one of the most palatable flavors of summer? Orchestral indie distilled in southern Scotland, a la Camera Obscura. Camera Obscura’s latest release, Let’s Get Out of This Country, has a luminously sweet flavor …

There are some bands that would become all the more popular if they’d simply change their zip code. Case in point is New York’s The Little Killers. While I’m sure certain dirtier corners of the Big Apple must appreciate this garage rock sludge of a bar band (and I mean that in the positive!), it’s a fact that Detroit would love them more.
Maybe the Little Killers have picked up on that mindset, because they hired trendy Detroit Producer (Ghetto Recorders), former Dirtbomb, and Jack …

Every once in a while, a record appears which is not of this world. This is not to say that it was delivered by aliens (unless we’re going to talk about Elvis a little) or anything silly like that. It’s more to the flavor of smaller outsiders who live in trees, subsist only on berries and the dew from leaves, and whose whole existence seems to be wrapped up in music and the enjoyment of it. If I had less pride, I would probably …

Stax Records Week could not go on without Otis Redding. Granted, too many people have made the mistake of using Redding as a catch-all symbol for all of the great moments in Soul music; but at the same time, whenever that aching, smoky-sweet voice pours out of a set of speakers, anyone can understand why this mistake is so often made. Otis Redding sang with a resonant loneliness that can still capture any listener and both soothe and plummet them to emotional depths few …

The hardest thing about addressing the Raconteurs’ Broken Boy Soldiers is distancing the band from its parts. There is, of course, Little Jack Lawrence on bass. Little Jack is from both the Greenhornes and Blanche. He’s a good bassist, and he also looks a lot like he could be Jack White’s shy little brother who would never hit anyone. Then there’s Patrick Keeler, who’s also a member of the Greenhornes. And I’m just going to admit it right now, I love the Greenhornes. I …