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Music
Thursday, August 7 2008
By Andrew Martin
Keeping in line with the other 9th and Murs efforts, Sweet Lord is a 10-track, under-40-minute collection of braggadocio, humor, soul, and boom-bap. And it's free!
By John Bergstrom
You knew better than to write the Charlatans off, didn't you?
By Matt Gonzales
Darker My Love’s sophomore effort, 2, defies easy classification. But that doesn’t mean it’s any good.
By Michael Keefe
Journeyman rock singer-songwriter Willie Nile follows his excellent third comeback album, Streets of New York, with its punchy and energetic live counterpart.
By Juli Thanki
Simple, honest, damn good bluegrass.
By Sarah Moore
One mustn't be too sophisticated to enjoy this singer/songwriter's debut.
Wednesday, August 6 2008
By John Bergstrom
It's almost impossible to hate the LA quartet's well-crafted amalgam of new wave, new romantic, and indie. But that doesn't stop them daring you to try.
By Matthew Fiander
It takes energy to listen to this kind of sad beauty, and it takes a great performer to make it.
By Maura Walz
For devotees of piano balladeers and yearning strivers, Greg Laswell serves up a pleasantly melodic hour. But for those who long to find something substantive and new behind the album’s echoes of Coldplay, it can only prompt to keep searching.
By Will Layman
Mr. Brasil '66 returns in '08 with some old tunes and some new friends, bringing bossa-nova up to date again.
By Zeth Lundy
Third volume of "hip shaking grooves made in Germany" in the late '60s and early '70s offers more deliriously great slabs of pseudo-funk, kinda-psych rock, and almost-jazz.
By Michael Metivier
The influences of Chicago's the Thin Man are intact, from cabaret waltzes to classic Americana, but the facility to interweave them on Spectres has only grown more impressive.
Tuesday, August 5 2008
By Ron Hart
The bard of piano pop makes a triumphant return to songwriting with a scathingly political album that makes the new Nas album sound like a campaign PSA for John McCain.
By Dan Raper
The CD's cover -- soft focus photography, sunshine, '70s style -- says it all.
By Erik Gundel
Looks like a mega breakout for one of the UK's most creative and promising bands.
By Deanne Sole
The Rough Guide to Australian Aboriginal Music is the best all-around single-disc introduction to Aboriginal music available at the moment.
By Filmore Mescalito Holmes
Ho hum, another day at the office for dubstep's new golden boy. I would hit that blunt, but I think I'd just fall asleep.
By James Bassett
Home Before Dark is an album of rare beauty, grace and eloquence that captures Diamond in all his plain-spoken and big-hearted glory.
Monday, August 4 2008
By Mehan Jayasuriya
For the first time in his career, the usually self-serious Oberst sounds loose, relaxed and even playful. Ironically enough, he's starting to sound like a songwriter worth taking even more seriously.
By Matthew Fiander
The Lord Dog Bird is an album with the rare combination of quiet and tenacity, one that proves that noise does not equal energy, but execution sure does.
By Sean Padilla
After an eight-year absence, Björk's right-hand woman returns with an excellent album that tweaks the down-tempo trip-hop of yore just enough to avoid becoming anachronistic.
By Joe Tacopino
Hold the Sauce! G. Love returns with his backing band to record an album full of hokey lyrics and feel-good hippie nonsense.
By Will Layman
The four electric sessions by the fusion juggernaut, coming back at you with screaming precision.
By James Bassett
Howlin’ Rain have obviously fought hard to find great songs at the heart of their freak-outs, but they lost some ferocity in the process.
more  Short Reviews
Thursday, August 7 2008
Tuesday, August 5 2008
Monday, August 4 2008
Friday, August 1 2008
more Features
Thursday, August 7 2008
By Joe Tacopino
With prog-metal meeting West Africa, Meric Long and Logan Kroeber disguise a world of influences in their surprisingly complex sound.
Tuesday, August 5 2008
By Will Layman
The talented, iconic rock star is laying it all on the line: both in terms of her personal life (in the form a bristling, tell-all memoir) and in terms of her career (with a self-financed new album). In a candid, biting new interview, Hatfield talks about what drove her to such a do-or-die proposition.
Friday, August 1 2008
By PopMatters Staff
You need not be popular to break the rules, and you need not be popular to break your own conventions. Sometimes the very best music is being crafted right on the fringes of the mainstream, and it is for that reason that sometimes you will find some of rock music's greatest DETOURS.
Monday, August 4 2008
By Derek Beres
It's fascinating to think that a culture that produces such deep and soulful bass music could also contact its spirits via the shrieking, grating sounds of this flute, yet such is the nature of Moroccan music.
(more Global Beat Fusion)
Monday, July 28 2008
By Ben Rubenstein
Yes, communing with thousands of music fans at summer festivals is fun...for a while. But then it becomes a group of people whom you really didn't plan on spending your weekend with, unless you typically hang out with stoned 16-year olds.
(more Mixtape Confessions)
Thursday, July 24 2008
By Andrew Gilstrap
Maybe it's because current methods of listening aren't cutting it that I've started buying more vinyl. Not because it sounds better or evokes nostalgia, but because listening to vinyl is a more structured and formal experience.
(more Field Studies)
Thursday, August 7 2008
By Sara Hayes
The Siren Festival is a quirky, quintessential part of summer that brings the community at large together, regardless of the bands playing.
By Chris Conaton
Comic-Con 2008 was a long weekend of geeked-out bliss and a chance to rub elbows with everyone from tiny independent comic artists trying to sell their books to big Hollywood stars. But it also meant gigantic crowds and impossibly long lines.
Wednesday, August 6 2008
By Chad Berndtson
These Friends comprise a band intimately aware of its greatest strengths; a command of the early ‘70s folk, country, and roots aspects of the Grateful Dead catalog as well as the R&B, the rollicking rock 'n' roll, and occasionally, the harder blues.
Tuesday, August 5 2008
By William Carl Ferleman
Sure, it was Foo Fighters that played, but it was singer-guitarist Dave Grohl and his unyielding desire for attention, his wild and crazy antics, and his unkempt, 80s-era, glam-metal hairdo that became the predominant focus of the evening.
more DVD Reviews
Thursday, July 31 2008
By Christel Loar
Informative and educational, intriguing and entertaining, part American history lesson, part biography and part concert film.
Friday, July 25 2008
By Chad Berndston
Musically, this works. I'd suggest watching this video with your eyes closed.
Thursday, July 17 2008
By Andrew Winistorfer
By Brown's seventh bloviating appearance, you just want to shake him and break his worn copy of the album across his head.
Thursday, August 7 2008
Wednesday, August 6 2008
Tuesday, August 5 2008
Wednesday, August 6 2008
Tuesday, August 5 2008
Monday, August 4 2008
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