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 …

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 …

I remember vividly the first time I stumbled across Nardwuar the Human Serviette. It was the summer of 2002, and I, like many music listeners, was just embarking on what would be an ongoing love affair with the White Stripes. I’d bought three of their records — White Blood Cells, De Stijl and a bootleg of the 2001 Peel Sessions — watched their buzzmaking MTV Movie Awards performance, and even seen them in concert for the first time, at Chene Park in Detroit …

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, …

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 …

Up Jumped the Devil:
The Modern Pea Pod’s Halloween Mixtape
Christmas…who needs it? From Robert Johnson to Black Sabbath to the Cramps, if the last century of music history has taught us anything, it’s that Halloween rocks a hell of a lot harder. And why shouldn’t it? Halloween is theatrical. All that candy is bad for your health. And God probably hates it. In short, it’s the essence of rock’n’roll, coming around once a year to spook us thoroughly just as the leaves are beginning to fall and the nights are beginning …

“Band Seeks Guitarist…”
Or: “No, seriously — why isn’t there a Fantasy Band League?”
So I was noticing a trend over the last few years of indie rock. In 1999, Sonic Youth completed their sixteenth full-length, SYR4: Goodbye, Twentieth Century. In doing so, they collaborated for the first time with Jim O’Rourke (himself not discographically inconsiderable) on the record’s rearrangements of 13 new music hits. Clearly, the band needed him: 2000′s NYC Ghosts & Flowers more or less sucked. With O’Rourke officially on board, however, 2002′s Murray Street was the best thing …

The White Stripes
Live at the Masonic Temple, Detroit
October 1, 2005
For all the national attention given to the White Stripes as the current “Detroit band” – Jack’s liner notes for the new Stooges reissues, the ubiquitous critical references to auto factories and smokestacks – it’s rarely acknowledged that, quite frankly, Jack and Meg don’t play hometown shows all that much. Since 2002, when the indie-breakthrough gravy train really kicked into high gear, the Stripes in Detroit have been a semi-annual prospect at best; with touring commitments in countries as far-flung as …