9.13.2011

Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner are tolerating the second day without electricity in their Stratford, Connecticut home. “Hurricane Irene knocked out our power and it might take a week to get it back,”...

“Oh god, I’m so lost / and I’m here in darkness / and I want to see the light of love / I’m looking for meaning in my life”—“My Ma” Judging by his press, Christopher Owens is a damaged individual...

In concert, St. Vincent’s lush, dynamic songs rarely stay in one place, but lone member Annie Clark does. The doe-eyed, fair-skinned beauty with the angelic voice of a trained Kate Bush and the mind...

Nepotism runs amok in the entertainment world, and when you hear that someone like Schuyler Fisk, the daughter of actress Sissy Spacek, is a singer/songwriter and actor, you might be forgiven for...

While I’m standing beside a nearly six-foot-tall statue of some cerulean death machine, shortly after setting foot on the expo hall floor, another attendee stops. He looks at me puzzled for a second...

Everybody has a story. And this week, with 22 albums coming out that caught our attention, we were a little spoiled for choice on which ones to tell. Among the stories in this issue are those of a...

It was the quietest, most serene and uneventful Sunday morning when Josh T. Pearson stopped by the studio at the end of our South By Southwest week in Austin. Needing coffee, we worked the frogs out...

Sometimes I feel like a descriptor as worn as “Bob Dylan-like” can get sapped of its prodigious qualities and left sounding almost like an insult. Blitzen Trapper’s Eric Earley has been nursing that...

Finally, a supergroup that’s actually super. For those who thought Mister Heavenly was good-not-great, Them Crooked Vultures were disappointing and Monsters of Folk were positively sleep-inducing,...

With a crash and a bang, the boys are backThe four members of Cymbals Eat Guitars hunkered down in the basement of bassist Matt Whipple’s New Jersey home to record Lenses Alien, the group’s latest...

A sophomore album can fall anywhere between sounding exactly like the first album, (thus risking being boring) to being radically different, which takes the chance of losing fans from a band’s...

I’ll never forget the first time I listened to St. Vincent (the stage name of soon-to-be 29-year-old Annie Clark). I’d heard of her debut and wanted to like it after being told she named it Marry Me...

When new wave erupted on the back-end of punk, there was Blondie, all crisp beats, silent screen star peroxide beauty and a sense of ’50s pop undertow that was equal parts innocence and pulp fiction...

When the San Francisco band Girls released its debut album, simply titled Album, in 2009, frontman Christopher Owens’ backstory threatened to eclipse his musical accomplishment. He had grown up in a...

Laura Marling sings in a clear, expressive voice that swoops birdlike from a dusky croon to a wry sing-speak. “The Muse,” which opens her third album, the adventurous A Creature I Don’t Know, may be...

It’s easy to feel surfeited on Jimi Hendrix releases. His live performances were exceptional, but we’ve now had enough material released that it seems every hammer-on has been covered. Given the...

Never mind the scares from the current horror films like Fright Night or Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. If you really want to be terrified, the first 30 minutes of Contagion do the job just fine, with...

Guess who’s been sitting on a treasure trove of footage about America’s Black Power Movement? The answer might surprise you. Director Goran Hugo...

Coaxing a successful comedy out of a dark historical drama is tricky even for the most seasoned filmmaker. Unfortunately, John Landis’ comedy/thriller Burke and Hare is one of those that misses the...

Few friendships are more intimate than those between teenage girls. Especially those between teenage girls at boarding school. Tanner Hall spins the tale of Fernanda’s (Rooney Mara) senior year at...

The second half of Futurama’s sixth season has been marked with a return to consistency. Even the weaker episodes were by no means unwatchable and had some great moments while the stronger ones held...

Even if the term grunge makes you cringe as much as it does me and most of the musicians in this book, and even if you haven’t listened to Nirvana’s Bleach or Soundgarden’s Screaming Life in years,...

Watch Blitzen Trapper’s entire 19-song performance from the 2008 Noise Pop Music Festival, largely featuring tracks from their 2007 album Wild Mountain...

Success wasn’t always a given for St. Vincent, at least in the mind of Annie Clark. Watching her captivating solo set at Noise Pop back in 2009, she appears shocked at the response her music was...

The ninth studio album in Mason Jennings’ discography, Minnesota, was released this week. For the past few weeks we’ve been premiering music videos from the album every Thursday. While Jennings has...

Nicole Atkins was among a group of 30-plus artists who played Paste’s Party in Austin during this past March’s SXSW. The New Jersey-based singer-songwriter led her backing band The Black Sea through...

Pokey LaFarge stands as one of this year’s most surprising breakout acts. That’s not because of his talent, which he has an abundance of as a musician. Rather, it’s his revival of early 20th century...