Music festivals are great because you can see tons of exciting artists in one place, but they can also cost a pretty penny. What’s a money-conscious music fan to do? Well, one option is to wait for a cool band like Strangers You Know to offer a chance to win tickets so you can go to a festival for free. That’s exactly…
In Hear This, the A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, since we’re getting into the summer groove, we’re picking what we’d like to be this year’s song of the summer.
In HateSong, we ask our favorite musicians, writers, comedians, actors, and so forth to expound on the one song they hate most in the world.
For two decades, the French duo of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel have been devoted in their focus to suspend focus via series after series of downtempo synths and treated, blissful vocals—so much so that it seems out of character for them to celebrate their legacy with a high-gloss deluxe anthology. It’s damn…
Whenever it seems like the glowingly smooth, wax-slick electro-pop trend of the past dozen years might finally be coming to a close, some new act emerges, programs a beat, plunks out an earworm on a synthesizer, and extends the lifeline of the stylistic status quo. The longer this state of affairs persists, however,…
With a collective résumé of Isis (the band), Old Man Gloom, Baptists, Botch, and Russian Circles, it would be understandable if Sumac never emerged from the shadow of its members’ past achievements. But the band transcends its supergroup status with What One Becomes. Sumac’s first LP, The Deal, is an angular mindfuck,…
Vocalist Shirley Manson says Garbage’s sixth studio album, Strange Little Birds, is “less fussed over” than any of the quartet’s records to date. This isn’t a code word for sloppy—that would never fly with the band members’ production and mixing backgrounds—but her assessment does describe the record’s airy…
The Monkees often get sidelined as an amusing footnote in the world of pop music, a “Pre-fab Four” that was hastily thrown together in the mid-’60s for a U.S. version of Beatlemania. But the four Monkees transcended their pre-fab status to become an actual band, and the transition is unlike any other in pop-music…
Badly Drawn Boy: I like Badly Drawn Boy, but not five CDs’ worth, so I’m keeping just the classic debut The Hour Of Bewilderbeast, with its beguiling singles “The Shining” and “Pissing In The Wind.” Keeping one, purging four.
As any band will tell you, the worst part of playing shows happens before the first fan gets there and long after they’ve all left. Loading in and loading out of a venue is a tedious, grueling task, and it’s why The A.V. Club wondered if anyone would be willing to participate in our “Pack The Van” challenge. Into It.…
If you’ve never heard a Weezer song before, you’re in for a treat: Rivers Cuomo and his bandmates have created some of the catchiest blasts of peppy and crunchy guitar rock ever recorded. You’re probably going to love these songs. Especially the one about the sweater.
If, like many fans, you think it’s one of the great rock injustices that The Replacements never really made it, you’ll have a whole new viewpoint after reading Bob Mehr’s exhaustive (and exhausting) new biography, Trouble Boys. Mehr spent several years interviewing not only Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson about the…
The Kills’ Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart relish working with a constrained sonic palette: electronic programming, scorched-blues guitar riffs scuffed with distortion and effects, and tenacious vocals. Ash & Ice, the band’s first album since 2011’s Blood Pressures, had more unique limitations in place. Several years…
For nearly three decades, Dale Crover and Roger “King Buzzo” Osborne have been the de facto Simon And Garfunkel, Sonny & Cher, or Hall & Oates of sludge metal’s underground universe. Quite simply, no other pair could lay claim to such a weirdly incongruous moniker than the Melvins—a band that’s tirelessly reinvented…
Fear Of Men displayed magnificent tension in buoyant bursts on its full-length debut, 2014’s Loom. The U.K. trio lifted Nico’s bashful elegance and turned it into sparkling, deeply heartbreaking indie pop. By contrast, follow-up Fall Forever feels more at ease, content and nearly reaching a comfortable emotional…
Those who’ve gone through their late teenage years might remember them as times of very rapid change. Although Barcelona punk(ish) outfit Mourn—four kids who can’t legally drink alcohol in the United States (including one who wouldn’t be old enough to vote)—is only 16 months removed from its self-titled debut,…
If you’re hoping for a return to the bold and thrilling musical adventurism of pre-Heartthrob Tegan And Sara, we’ve got bad news for you: The duo are remaining squarely in the mainstream pop arena, at least for the foreseeable future. You may long for the days of The Con, but the sisters have planted a flag in Taylor…
This summer Dashboard Confessional and Taking Back Sunday, two bands synonymous with the emo boom of the early-to-mid ’00s, will tour together on the reactivated Taste Of Chaos tour. Although both were born out of the ’90s punk and hardcore scenes, they came to prominence as the word “emo” was becoming part of the…
Lily Allen: My favorite records and bands, as you’ll learn, can be pretty depressing—which is sort of the opposite of my personality. That’s part of the reason I’m inclined to keep both of the Lily Allen CDs I own: 2006’s front-to-back terrific Alright, Still, and its slightly lesser follow-up It’s Not Me, It’s You.…
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