Apr 25, 2009 By Tom Vale Web Exclusive

Onstage at Club De Ville at this year’s SXSW, time finally ran out. “Well, goddamnit, Austin, we have to go,” said Matthew Houck, singer/songwriter and organizing Beard Number One of the multibearded monster that is Phosphorescent. His joy was slightly dented by the news, but he recovered quickly (“we’re not going to pout. Well, we might pout a little”). Then he brought the show to its slightly premature close with a raucous, freewheeling version of-what else?-“The Party’s Over”: “Let’s call it a night/The party’s over/You know that all good things must end.”

Apr 11, 2009 By Frank Valish Web Exclusive

This year marks two important anniversaries for Bob Mould. Thirty years ago, in 1979, his seminal trio, Hüsker Dü, played its first live gig. Ten years later, after Hüsker’s brutal demise, Mould made his solo debut with Workbook, an indie-rock masterwork and certified classic that found Mould baring his soul. It is an album that remains as poignant today as it was then. Mould’s latest and ninth solo album, Life and Times, revisits the writing style and personal tone of Workbook, and, while Mould has dabbled to various degrees in electronic atmospheres and textures in the past decade, Life and Times also finds him more at ease with the guitar than he has seemed in years.

Feb 01, 2009 By Evan Rytlewski Winter 2009 - Anticipated Albums of 2009

Brian Aubert is flattered that so many people mistook him for a woman after hearing his band’s breakthrough single, “Lazy Eye.”

Feb 01, 2009 By Jim Scott M. Ward

“You can only discover something once,” M. Ward says, speaking about both his own music and the influence other artists have had on him. Over the course of his first five solo LPs, Ward slowly opened up, both lyrically and musically, so that each successive album still exuded that feeling of discovery. His sixth, Hold Time, is no exception.

Feb 01, 2009 By Matt Fink Winter 2009 - Anticipated Albums of 2009

With 2005’s I Am a Bird Now, an album that introduced us to a songwriter with an otherworldly vibrato and an ear for songs that ached with an uneasy desire for transformation and transcendence, Antony Hegarty entered his name on the list of artists who will never be mistaken for someone else.

Nov 01, 2008 By Kyle Lemmon Year End 2008 - Best of 2008

Back in their home base of Donnington, England, Late of the Pier’s career started with a jumbled mess of dusty synthesizer equipment, guitars in various states of disrepair, and scattershot drum kits. The band’s keyboardist/sampler, Sam Potter, remembers those early days stuck in a musty attic well. “Our singer/guitarist Sam [Eastgate]’s dad played in a couple bands in the ’80s,” Potter explains. “A lot of the original instruments we played came from that attic. We used to practice with this old battered blue drum kit and this old guitar that was covered in comics. We used to get stoned and just go crazy.”

Nov 01, 2008 By Nate Daly Year End 2008 - Best of 2008

Life was looking grim for Will Roan last winter. “A year ago, I was working making raincoats and just trying to be able to pay rent and being really scared because my band was breaking up. It’s a really strange place to be in now—recording a full-length record. Bizarre,” says the singer for Brooklyn’s Amazing Baby.

Nov 01, 2008 By Lorraine Carpenter The Dears

“Like all Dears records, there’s a grand theme,” says Murray Lightburn, referring to the feeling of being under threat, the underlying idea behind his band’s fourth album, Missiles. It’s a universal enough concept, in step with the record’s mid-paced marvels of melody, harmony, rhythm, and riffage, located at one of the more soulful intersections of pop and rock. Missiles may not seem a particularly fitting title for such romantically inclined music (“paced to love-making,” says the band’s blog), but melodrama remains at the core of The Dears’ oeuvre.

Nov 01, 2008 By Matt Fink Year End 2008 - Best of 2008

It took a few years, but as the lines between genres and cultures have blurred, it seems like we’re now finally at a place where fans of loud guitars and shouted vocals can admit to liking dance music. Hot Chip, Of Montreal, Girl Talk—these are all acts that have designed songs for the dance floor only to be accepted and celebrated by the kind of listeners who likely once would have cringed when rock bands embraced disco.