David Byrne recently compiled an album called The Only Blip Hop Record You Will Ever Need, which catalogues the vanguard of this new genre: bands that set percussive, PC-generated pings and drones against skeletal acoustic instrumentation. Denver’s George and Caplin, who appear at the Hipster Youth Halfway House (27th and…

Before the ideas of “pop” and “punk” were grafted in unholy union, there were bands that didn’t know there was ever a difference. Add the Hacks to that list. Influenced by the gruff, Oi!-tinged punk of Channel 3 or Sham 69 and the almost conceptual sloppiness of Crimpshrine (whose “Fucked…

A profile of your average Maybellines fan: thick glasses, cardigan sweater, scuffed-up thrift-store shoes, a back pocket full of half-melted candy, and a record shelf stacked with 45s by Stereolab, Tiger Trap, Heavenly and the Modern Lovers. The Maybellines stick Casio organ tones into buzzy guitar riffs like cards into…

I think it’s hard to pull off actually having feeling in aggressive rock,” says Chris Sorensen, guitarist of the pigeonhole-dodging Denver group Vaux. He and his bandmates were once known as Eiffel, a clean-cut, emo-scented combo that somehow went horribly wrong. Instead of sticking to meek melodies and humble ambitions,…

The Apples’ antsy retroactivity has ping-ponged back and forth so many times over the past nine years, it’s become downright dizzying, from ’60s pop to ’80s jangle to ’90s indie. By the time the band released its fourth studio album, 2000’s Discovery of a World Inside the Moone, it was…

Kerry McDonald, former bassist of local emo legend Christie Front Drive, has reinvented himself with the Mighty Rime. Sounding at times like Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum, Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch or Lungfish’s Daniel Higgs huffing helium, McDonald takes the unpaved back road to indie-rock rusticity. “Broke Baroque” is…

It’s always good to put yourself in new situations,” says Scott McCloud, singer, guitarist and svelte frontman of New York City’s Girls Against Boys. He speaks from experience. Since the band’s previous incarnation, Soulside, formed in 1986, McCloud and his bandmates have perpetually reconfigured, revamped and recast themselves — first…

When listening to current R&B, one might marvel at its distinct lack of anything resembling either rhythm or blues. Modern-day studio auteurs like D’Angelo, Raphael Saadiq and even the abstract Madlib have certainly helped reanimate the tradition of classic Stevie Wonder-esque production, though their antiseptic arrangements usually end up pumping…

It used to be that people struggled to place Sonic Youth’s music within some kind of context. Was it avant-garde improv or pop-culture pastiche? Was it fueled by theoretical abstraction or punk-rock impulse? Self-indulgence or self-negation? Now that Sonic Youth (appearing Wednesday, August 21, at the Ogden Theatre) has become…

There is a secret history of British new wave. Beneath the cosmetic facade of Boy George and Adam Ant lurked a legion of post-punk misfits — champions of cheap guitars, thrift-store glamour and reckless experimentation. Behind every Duran Duran was the spiky funk of the Pop Group; behind every Bow…

Our everyday experiences have more influence on our music than anything else does,” says Dan Matz, singer and guitarist of Windsor for the Derby, a group whose members split their time between upstate New York and Austin, Texas. “All sorts of everyday things inspire me. I could write a song…

It’s hard to believe that seven years have passed since Qualm first inflicted a stage with its breakneck teenage punk rock. Now wiser, tighter and (kinda) all grown up, the band will be celebrating the release of its new album, A Long Story Short, on Saturday, June 29, at Tulagi…

As a band, I’d say that Pleasure Forever is a celebration of the ecstatic annihilation of orgasmic energy.” So asserts Dave Clifford, drummer for the vicious cabaret that is San Francisco’s Pleasure Forever. Clifford, guitarist Josh Hughes and keyboardist/vocalist Andrew Rothbard form an unholy trinity of rhythm, noise and verse…

When you’re a little kid, cursive handwriting seems like such an arcane, esoteric thing: Its strange and indecipherable loops and swirls reduce words to fluid mystery, some secret code shared by grown-ups. By the time you actually reach adulthood, cursive looks juvenile, even quaint — the hormone-inked scrawl of impetuous…

As its name would imply, local indie-rock combo O’er the Ramparts is well-versed in the fine art of the anthem. The band, which appears Friday, June 7, at the 15th Street Tavern, stirs up an epic mess of skittering melodies and saccharine-baited hooks that harks back to the vintage American…

Trying to pin down Trans Am is as mercurial an endeavor as defining postmodern culture itself. Since postmodernism likes to subject itself to its own convoluted methods of critique, it’s easy for the whole thing to disappear down the drain and take the sink along with it. It might, therefore,…

It’s hard to put into words or numbers the impact that a local band can have on its hometown. Besides just providing the soundtrack to endless drunken Saturday nights, the local bands with tenacity and gumption sometimes wind up as an emblem — the figurehead, even — around which a…

In the world of music, change is the only constant. Movements mutate. Yesterday’s vogue is today’s punchline is tomorrow’s retro fad. Punk rock is, of course, not exempt from this fluctuation. The turnover of “wannabe” to “it band” to “has- been” can be just as rapid and precipitous as it…

Some bands trumpet their presence like a parade of angels. You know — God’s gift to music. The recent elevation of Bono to the status of world diplomat and would-be savior is just one example of the messiah complex rooted in the rock-star psyche. John Lennon spent the latter half…

For two decades, lead singer Greg Graffin and his troops have been soldiering on, watching waves of trends break off the Bad Religion bulwarks as they fortified a melodic hardcore formula. Sure, their music is fast, loud, and hummable; it is pop-punk, after all. But Bad Religion has always cast…

Imagine yourself an astronaut adrift in space. Your ship just blew up. You’ve been jettisoned into emptiness with only an eggshell of oxygen between you and eternity. After that first sunburst of panic, an icy resignation washes over you. You look down at the spacesuit enshrouding your body. You read…

While past Jonathan Richman albums have revealed the singer to be many things — Velvet Underground groupie, interstate situationist, champion of affection, eater with gusto — his newest release adds another entry to that resumé: artist. The back cover sports his scrawled pastel depiction of an elfish figure seated on…