LUCIUS Second Nature (Mom + Pop) — To the legions who’ve been longing for the next great record that’s suited to be accompaniment for a tearful backwards skate after a roller-rink break-up, Lucius is here for you. Six long years … Continue reading Medium Rotation — Second Nature; Growing Up
188. The Jam, The Gift (1982) “For me, the songs on The Gift have less stops and starts,” Rick Buckler, drummer of the Jam, observed several years after the release of the band’s final album. “This is what I’m getting … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #188 to #186
Kathleen Hanna Won’t Save You, So Stop Asking Her To by Laura Wynne This week brought the unlikely return of Creem. The brattier counterpoint to Rolling Stone in the nineteen-seventies and nineteen-eighties relaunched as a robustly updated website and a … Continue reading Outside Reading — Your Best American Grrrl edition
“Nothing (In My Head),” the new track from the Baltimore band Pinkshift, is a bazooka. In press material accompanying the release, the band explains that the song is about feeling trapping and longing for escape. The annotation is hardly necessary, … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Pinkshift, “Nothing (In My Head)”
ALDOUS HARDING Warm Chris (4AD) — The fourth studio album from Aldous Harding crackles with invention. Well, crackles might not be the right terminology, since that overall impression this smoothed-out, folk-grounded pop gives is of ideal refinement. The tracks on … Continue reading Medium Rotation — Warm Chris; Crooked Tree
These posts are about the songs that fell just short of crossing the key line of chart success, entering the Billboard Top 40. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 41. After releasing a string of hit singles … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Near Misses — “Dance Naked”
191. X, See How We Are (1987) The sixth X record, See How We Are, found the Los Angeles band in transition. On their previous studio outing, Ain’t Love Grand, they undertook a shift that proved faulty. They parted ways … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #191 to #189
I don’t know I can be expected to resist this. Suede’s new single, “She Still Leads Me,” moves with a swoop and dramatic grandeur that evokes the nineteen-nineties heyday of Britpop overstaters, such as Pulp, Oasis, and, um, themselves, I … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Suede, “She Still Leads Me”
SUPERCHUNK Wild Loneliness (Merge) — It should not be said that time has mellowed Superchunk. Sure, it’s been more than thirty years since “Slack Motherfucker,” their official debut single after a release under the name Chunk, but the nail-spitting rage … Continue reading Medium Rotation — Wild Loneliness; Painless
194. Big Audio Dynamite, This is Big Audio Dynamite (1985) “We put on a great show, unless you turn up hoping to see the old Clash,” Mick Jones explained as his band Big Audio Dynamite embarked on a tour to … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #194 to #192
Coffee for Two 