Everyone's a Critic
Ever wish you could host one of your favorite musicians in your living room, interacting and listening to your favorite songs? Ben Harper turned his show at the Copley into just such an event, dishing …
Many of my friends will give me grief for this review. Until the release of Melophobia, I loathed Cage the Elephant. Their previous songs were so unbearably cheesy to me that I dismissed this album …
Almost every rhyme, predictable. Almost every sentiment, common (hopefully). But I am behind this one, and you should be, too. For commonality and for predictability, actually. Because rock and roll has come around to the …
Buddy Guy is cool. Leaning on an amp and playing his Fender Strat with one-hand cool. Wiping down his face and strings with a towel mid-song cool. Taking the drummers stick and using it like …
I'm going to take a step that Darkside would appreciate and open this review with a recklessly bold statement: Psychic is a classic album. The 11-minute opening track, the Kubrickian level of detail, the efficient …
"And this is how it starts..." Ambient, synth-heavy, and loaded with pop hooks, the music of Manchester, England's latest breakouts, the 1975, met a friendly crowd at the Belly Up just three months after selling …
“Will you still need me...when I'm 64?” Yeah, even at 71 we need you, when you can still make great original music. My favorite cut on Paul McCartney’s new record is “Early Days,” an acoustic …
Rhode island–based alt-country act Deer Tick belted out the lyrics to “The Bump” — "We're full grown men, but we act like kids, we'll face the music next time we roll in!" — as the …
They wouldn’t shell out for Bill Ward. That’s one obscenity. He’s the drummer for Sabbath, dunderheads, pull out the purse. Only excuse I can think of is Tony Iommi thought maybe he was down for …
The last time Jack Johnson played in the Gaslamp, the crowd watching his 2004 Street Scene set seemed to stretch a mile from the stage. So when his latest gig at the intimate Balboa Theatre …
On tour with Ozzy for the first time since 1979, Black Sabbath reciprocated the over-capacity crowd’s energy tenfold, the way only a truly great rock band can. While this tour is in support of this …
Two decades and 12 albums later, of Montreal mastermind Kevin Barnes has decided to throw back to the band’s earliest sounds. Lousy With Sylvianbriar steps back from the synth-soaked songs of Paralytic Stalks and Hissing …
Meet Este, Danielle, and Alana Haim. The three sisters, along with drummer Dash Hutton, make up indie-pop band Haim (rhymes with “time”). Haim’s soft rock-meets-R&B sound got a nod to Fleetwood Mac by critics in …
The popular young British singer/songwriter Jake Bugg was either being very polite to the chatty attendees in the back of the room, or the monitors facing Bugg were loud enough so that he could not …
Whereas the early ’90s were all about 20-somethings drowning in a sea of grunge, the onset of this decade seems to find its youngsters awash in a sea of folk and indie-pop. So it was …
Slow. Dissolve. As opposed to slow dazzle. Cinematic synth-pop owing at least as much to German Expressionism as the actually Krautrock Kraftwerk they salute through synth and textures. Impeccable ‘tis, in counterpoint and timbre, to …