dada’s Puzzle remains as intricate and rewarding today as it was then: a universally appealing, type-O album that adults, MTV teens, and rockers could all get behind.
Goon’s Hour of Green Evening is seductive, willowy music with a surreal edge, like Skygreen Leopards’ hallucinatory indie folk, but without the shrill chord changes.
The Shore’s Light Years boasts a seductive intimacy typically reserved for baroque pop, while still flexing its arena-rock Britpop swagger. Too bad nobody ever heard it.
Astragal reincarnate what made 1980s post-punk so compulsively listenable, helping them stand out in a fascinating genre with precious little competition.
Only five songs into his Las Vegas set, shouts of “PLAY MORE SMITHS!” began ringing out. Unfortunately for Morrissey, it was a commonly shared sentiment.
The Lickerish Quartet’s Threesome trilogy suffers from all the genre’s shortcomings, but the devoted bubblegum/power-pop demographic will absolutely eat these records up.
Compared to March’s golden Guv III by Young Guv, the tandem release Guv IV abandons Ben Cook’s Byrdsian roots and represents a squandered opportunity.
Fish-era Marillion’s swan-song masterpiece Clutching at Straws is a hung-over eulogy to the twin nightmares of stardom and addiction.
The Heavy Heavy’s ‘Life and Life Only’ mashes up soul, psych, mod, and a tinge of eerie folk to create ’60s sound thrillingly at odds with today’s pop charts.
Wiri Donna follows Jimmy Page’s dictum that girding softer verses with exploding landmines can be as mind-expanding as any sustained, four-minute assault.
A 14-year-old at his first rock concert stares down a stampede of 15,000 drug-addled maniacs fleeing clouds of choking tear gas in an effort to see Rush play.
Two Margot EPs blend smoothly together for a 50-minute excursion into mind-expanding bliss, effortlessly straddling dream-pop and early ’70s psychedelia.
