Music

Aw, it must be so hard for pop stars when they become successful. Today, camera phones and weblogs smudge the line between fan and critic, between celebrity and citizen.
April 20, 2006 at 12:00 am

New York's gone totally yuppie and Los Angeles was never that hip anyway, so what's the independent music scene to do?
April 20, 2006 at 12:00 am

Considering the recent success of Brooklyn-based indie rockers the French Kicks, it's hard to believe that only a few years back they were playing a gig to drunk kids at an unnamed Philly frat house.
April 13, 2006 at 12:00 am

In the wake of Ashlee Simpson's lip-synch debacle on SNL nearly two years ago, Kelefa Sanneh wrote a diatribe against its most strident critics in The New York Times. "The Rap Against Rockism" asked "Could it really be a coincidence that rockist complaints often pit straight white men against the rest of the world?" (A rockist, of course, being a subscriber to the creed of authenticity and a strict guitars-drums-bass worldview.) In other words, is "alternative rock," in all its monikers, yet another white boys' club defined by its own exclusivity? Coachella, a documentary on the six-year-old Indio, California music festival of the same name, incessantly begs such questions by refusing to play to its strengths.
April 13, 2006 at 12:00 am

Much of the hype surrounding the Flaming Lips' long-in-the-works 12th album jumped on frontman Wayne Coyne's murmurs about "more guitars." The Oklahoma City veterans' last two albums, 1999's brilliant The Soft Bulletin and 2002's kinda brilliant Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, eschewed the band's tattered punk threads for heady, orchestrated prog.
April 6, 2006 at 12:00 am

Who: Philadelphia's own Man Man Genre: Experimental melodic mayhem Sounds like: If Frank Zappa and Tom Waits had a child out of wedlock Songs to download: "10 lb.
April 6, 2006 at 12:00 am

Their music has been dubbed new-wave, pop-punk and various combinations thereof, but stellastarr* just likes to call it "rock." Between watching soft-core porns and touring to promote their album, Harmonies for the Haunted, stellastarr*'s pretty busy these days. Street: How would you define your music?
March 30, 2006 at 12:00 am

Real thugs never die. Unfortunately, they also have trouble staying creative. Ghostface Killah's newest album, Fishscale, is yet another record to emerge from Wu-Tang's prolific machinery.
March 30, 2006 at 12:00 am

Dov Kogen began singing and writing songs at the ripe age of three, when he took the tune of Jewish hymn "Adon Olam" and set it to the one-word lyric "guitar." "I didn't actually play guitar back then," the psychology major and music minor says, "so I sort of strummed my aunt's 30-year-old classical guitar," which he would actually learn to play in the fourth grade.
March 30, 2006 at 12:00 am

With the wild success of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs's debut album Fever to Tell, the musical trio from New York set a remarkably high standard for itself.
March 30, 2006 at 12:00 am

Originally J. Leto and his brother's side project, 30 Seconds to Mars has recently gained a reputation in its own right.
March 23, 2006 at 12:00 am

It is not often that a band produces something truly unique. Almost every successful indie group today somehow derives its sound from Morrissey or Bowie or even Byrne.
March 23, 2006 at 12:00 am

Penn's very own the Pale Nimbus knows something is missing from this university's campus. And so do their fans.
March 16, 2006 at 12:00 am

Since their 1991 debut, Stereolab has functioned as one of the most influential -- if under the radar -- bands of the pseudo-pop electronica circuit.
March 16, 2006 at 12:00 am

"The last time we were out on tour was two or three years ago. We've actually just been recording this album, and watching the children.
February 23, 2006 at 12:00 am

Hopping the pond makes for strange bedfellows. Though the Subways had an early U.S. breakthrough this fall on that great cultural arbiter, The O.C., a February release date has lumped their debut with the latest wave of British musical exports.
February 23, 2006 at 12:00 am

Richard Cheese The Sunny Side of the Moon: The Best of Richard Cheese If this is your first listen to Richard Cheese, be forewarned: too much Cheese may result in massive indigestion, and upchuck reflexes may ensue.
February 16, 2006 at 12:00 am

Several years ago, three members of the orchestral pop band Stars smoked pot in New York's Central Park and were arrested by an undercover cop.
February 16, 2006 at 12:00 am

This past week, the line-ups for two important music festivals were announced. Hippie Bonnarooites cursed its indie line-up, while Coachella fans were equally disappointed by its list of bands.
February 9, 2006 at 12:00 am

Straddling the state line between Texas and Arkansas is a little city called Texarkana, home of the only U.S.
February 9, 2006 at 12:00 am