
Weezer Pull Themselves Out of a Rut with Help From an Orchestra
Fresh out of gimmicks, Weezer think outside the box and deliver their most sincere album in years with OK Human.
Fresh out of gimmicks, Weezer think outside the box and deliver their most sincere album in years with OK Human.
Part social commentary and part fictional narrative, Green Day's American Idiot came out of nowhere and impressed with its biting political subversion, exploration of teenage angst, love, and uncertainty, and perhaps most importantly, brilliant structures, transitions, and overall cohesion.
Green Day's Dookie was the best rock album of 1994. Scores of critics admitted that, yes, this 14-track album full of speedy pop-punk tunes about panic attacks, boredom, and masturbation was quite catchy, but no one would've held it against them if they doubted that Dookie would have had staying power.
Buzzcocks' Late for the Train features concert recordings and radio sessions from the second age of punk rock's most resilient romantics.
Catholic Guilt's "A Boutique Affair" taps into the zeitgeist of distance, isolation, while adding a spirit of uplift and community.
Cherry Red Records' six-disc Revillos compilation, Stratoplay, successfully charts the convoluted history of Scottish new wave sensations.
Steve McDonald talks about the year that produced the first Redd Kross EP, an early eighth-grade graduation show with a then-unknown Black Flag, and a punk scene that welcomed and defined him.
The Elephant 6-related, new Nana Grizol album, South Somewhere Else, finds the band attempting to reckon with the racist past and present of the US South.
In the conclusion of our survey of the post-reformation career of Buzzcocks, PopMatters looks at the final two discs of Cherry Red Records' comprehensive retrospective box-set.
With a four-decade career under their belt, on the sixth disc in the new box-set Sell You Everything, it's heartening to see Buzzcocks refusing to settle for an album that didn't try something new.