Apr 11, 2009
By Frank Valish
Husker Du
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. More
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. More
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. More
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.” More
