Allowing your debut album to share its title with a children’s book is a dicey proposition, but it isn’t the only risk As Tall As Lions has taken. That 2004 album, Lafcadio, was a beautifully textured, sonically rich and emotionally dynamic beast that allowed listeners to smell both Hey Mercedes…

Plenty scoffed when the hip-hop valley boys of She Wants Revenge went all Joy Division-y. Some even called them goth poseurs. Those people were missing the point. Anyone who’s had the chance to catch Justin Warfield and Adam Bravin’s dark ’80s dance act live should have revised their opinions by…

In our post-post-post-post world, everything has been broken down, rebuilt and burnt to the ground. And yet the fractal factorials of sound still yield fresh ideas. Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong — the New York duo known as the Books — simultaneously create and destroy pop music with acoustic…

Jacques Brel and Morrissey walk into a bar. As Kurt Weill pours the Maker’s and glasses are raised, Marlene Dietrich pulls up a bar stool. The liquor flows and the conversation percolates. Dietrich is considering a sex change, Brel can’t stop talking about abortions and the Holocaust, and Morrissey keeps…

If you’re wondering what Mick Collins — founder of venerable Detroit rockers the Dirtbombs — thinks of trendy garage rock, check the liner notes of the most recent ‘Bombs compilation, If You Don’t Already Have a Look. Defending a brilliant Yoko Ono cover, Collins says, “Fuck you and your white…

After achieving art-pop perfection with 2002’s Out of the Fierce Parade — a shimmering, Chris Walla-produced masterwork that combined guitar-rock punch and OK Computer-era keening — the Velvet Teen shocked fans and critics by forsaking guitars altogether and getting all cryptic and political on its 2004 piano-driven opus, Elysium. Fortunately,…

You’re forgiven for approaching every supergroup with skepticism — even more so when a group’s first album was less than thrilling. Which brings us to Jeff Tweedy, Jim O’Rourke and Glenn Kotche. The three are back again as Loose Fur, and this time they got it right. Instead of a…

Ever since Mick Jagger sang “Sympathy for the Devil” at Altamont, rock and roll and evil have gone together like fire and brimstone. Seattle’s Himsa takes its name from the Sanskrit word ahimsa, which connotes living in peace and harmony. By dropping the important first letter, the bandmembers transform the…

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of Exene Cervenka’s arrival in Los Angeles and the fiftieth anniversary of the punk grande dame’s arrival on earth. To prove she’s still going strong, Cervenka has released a brand-new album with her “band,” the Original Sinners — made up of collaborator Jason Edge…

A candidate for best and longest new band name of the millennium, Austin’s I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness has finally released its much-anticipated full-length debut. During the nearly three years since issuing its 2003 Britt Daniels-produced EP, the quintet has focused on sharpening its sound and building a…

Like a trip to the dentist without that minty fresh feeling, Orthrelm leaves you aching, reeling and confused. The experimental rock of D.C.-based guitarist Mick Barr and drummer Josh Blair translates the minimalist approaches of twentieth-century avant-garde composers such as Steve Reich, Terry Riley and Philip Glass into the context…

Listening to Peregrine, the Appleseed Cast’s forthcoming album, you’d never know that the group got its start as an emo outfit named December’s Tragic Drive in Lawrence, Kansas, during the late ’90s. While peers such as the Get Up Kids have taken their adolescent emoting into alt-country territory, the Appleseed…

Matt Pond PA has always existed on the periphery of popularity. With nine releases over the past eight years, the Brooklyn-based chamber-pop outfit has not wanted for material. But there has always been an introverted quality to its music — a sense that the ensemble is playing through a thick…

Hype can seemingly turn a mediocre band into a great band, and a great band into the new savior of rock. Take L.A.’s the Bronx, for example. Still touring behind their critically acclaimed 2003 debut, the band’s members are doing their best to live up to raves that referred to…

Another singer-songwriter prepares to bare his old soul to a bar full of half-listening regulars. He tunes, checks one-two, and hardly anyone notices. As he begins to play, the graceful, delicate plucking turns a few heads. Then a beautiful woman’s voice rings achingly from the stage, and all eyes turn…

With 2004’s Summer in Abaddon, Rob Crow and Zach Smith cemented Pinback’s reputation as the most misty-eyed and oblique indie-pop band ever. Now Crow spreads his beautifully erratic wings in his gazillionth side project, the Ladies, an experiment that finds him paired with Zach Hill, the maniacal drummer and polyrhythm…

Hard Times Are in Fashion was one of the great surprises of last summer. After honing its emo chops, Koufax shook things up with its third record — an irresistibly hooky slab of dark, danceable rock. Like the Strokes forced to play Ben Folds and Psychedelic Furs covers, the feisty…

Sometimes, Mira Romantschuk still can’t believe her luck. “Two years ago we were in Paris, without homes, in a very critical state,” she exclaims. “We left Paris for Finland to work on our music and try to survive on what we had.” Romantschuk is recounting the origins of the duo…

On the eve of the release of In Flames’ eighth studio album and an extensive tour of Europe and North America, Daniel Svensson is out for a quiet walk with his three-month-old daughter. With a two-year-old at home, too, Svensson, the intense and intimidating man who pummels the drum kit…

She Wants Revenge’s Justin Warfield and Adam Bravin have been on the music scene for more than a decade. The L.A. DJ/producers have crossed paths many times but only recently found a way to turn their love of American soul, break-dancing records and ’80s music into a tense, percolating amalgam…

Listening to New Orleans’s Soilent Green is like being dragged along the bottom of the Mississippi by a speedboat driven by a chain-smoking, velvet-clad demon. At almost inconceivable velocity, the sludge of Scott Crochet’s furious bass and Brian Patton’s detuned guitars gushes into your nostrils, ears and mouth, while the…

Most Precious Blood is pissed off again. Religious fanatics, numb consumers, faithless exes, vapid politicians and those thoughtless carnivores all suffer in the New York gothcore assailant’s Merciless/onslaught. Rob Fusco’s seething vocals harmonize with the hurtling guitar work of Justin Brannan and Rachel Rosen in a smoldering manifesto against apathy…