It was sometime around 1997 or 1998 when author and rock journalist Michael Azerrad was sitting at home watching a generic multi-part history on rock ’n’ roll. It was late in the evening, and the episode he caught detailed the history of punk rock—or was supposed to. But something was wrong. “It went straight from…

Permanent Records is an ongoing closer look at the records that matter most.

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re picking songs about specific states.

In Set List, we talk to veteran musicians about some of their most famous songs, learning about their lives and careers, and maybe hearing a good backstage anecdote or two in the process.

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re picking songs about specific states.

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re picking songs about specific states.

After 12 years together the Phoenix punk outfit Andrew Jackson Jihad is dead. Well, sort of. On February 24 the band announced on its Facebook page that, “We are officially changing our name from Andrew Jackson Jihad to the simple, familiar abbreviation that most of you already call us: AJJ.” The two reasons the band…

Permanent Records is an ongoing closer look at the records that matter most.

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re picking songs about specific states.

Just because an artist is popular or a record critically beloved doesn’t mean it’s actually sold a ton of copies. That’s the lesson Kurt Vile learns in the latest episode of Talent Show, in which we challenge him to a classic game of “what’s sold more?” While Vile has his favorites—Nirvana over Pearl Jam, The Beatles’ …

Kendrick Lamar’s Untitled Unmastered is a master class in managing expectations. True to its title, each of the eight songs on Lamar’s surprise album is christened simply with a track number and a date, presumably (though not necessarily) signifying when they were recorded. Coupled with the no-frills packaging and…

Compact discs aren’t going to disappear overnight. They still make up a large portion of sales for music labels, and are the dominant format for music in a physical medium. But it’s also undeniable that digital music—along with more and more fans of physical formats turning to vinyl—ensures that the little plastic…

In Expert Witness, The A.V. Club talks to industry insiders about the actual business of entertainment in hopes of shedding some light on how the pop-culture sausage gets made.

All the way back in 2015, it looked like indie rock had lost one of the good ones when Rob Crow of Pinback—facing the possible foreclosure of his home—announced that making music had become an unrewarding financial strain on his family and he was calling it quits. It was certainly a sad sign of the times for the…

Everyone reaches a point at which hearing the opening riff of “Blister In The Sun”—for maybe the hundredth time, maybe the thousandth—results in a spontaneously induced catatonic state, triggered by decades worth of overexposure. There’s nothing much to be done about it, really. As part of the soundtrack for a 1997…

Nada Surf has had a truly bizarre career trajectory. If you told someone 20 years ago that the same band that had a slightly gimmicky radio hit with “Popular” would eventually become one of the most consistent indie rock bands around, they would probably think you were delusional. Yet here we are, eight albums deep,…

Certain artists raise a simple question: Can you blame someone for making the same album over and over again if that album is always really good? AC/DC, The Ramones, and Motörhead have all implored listeners to ask that question, and there’s a strong case to be made that M. Ward does as well. For over 15 years, he’s…

Early in Music For Listening To Music To, Katy Goodman’s stunning soprano ascends about 40 seconds into “One True Love,” resulting in a gorgeous moment of sonic bliss to inspire a half-dozen heart-eye emojis. Moments like these are par for the course on a La Sera record, but what makes this one so striking is that it…

A mother can’t protect her children forever. Poliça frontwoman Channy Leaneagh knows this well, so she opens the excellent third album by her downcast Minneapolis synth-pop outfit by doing the next best thing: offering a warning.

The standard angle on Robert Pollard, past (and future) Guided By Voices frontman and eternal indie-rock king of Dayton, Ohio, is to highlight his prolific streak. And it’s not an unfair reputation, either, as according to his record label, Pollard has released a staggering 24 solo albums on top of Guided By Voices’…