Silly Little Show-Biz Book Club is Nathan Rabin’s ongoing exploration of books involving show business, with a special emphasis on the very bad and the very sleazy.

Almost as soon as teenagers were invented, they started dying off in droves—on the pop charts, anyway. Although the word “teen-ager” first appeared in print in the September 1941 issue of Popular Science, the idea of a distinct life phase between childhood and adulthood began forming decades before, driven by a…

S.: Jenn Champion—who recently changed her longtime stage name from Jenn Ghetto, citing the potential offensiveness of the word “ghetto”—was part of a fascinating, fruitful Seattle scene in the mid-’90s that spun around Carissa’s Wierd. (That spelling error is intentional.) That band most notably spawned Ben Bridwell…

When Bear Vs. Shark announced its first reunion show following a good deal of teasing on social media, there was plenty of excitement for the Michigan band’s return. Existing for only a few years in the early 2000s, Bear Vs. Shark released two albums of near perfect post-hardcore before disbanding at the end of 2005.…

I’ve never been much of a beer drinker (wine, please), which means that I’m an even-worse beer pourer. The Onion kitchen boasts not one but two kegs, and nearly every time I approach them, I wind up with a beer milkshake: about seven inches of foam and one inch of actual liquid at the bottom. So when I signed up to…

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, in honor of Labor Day, we’re picking songs about work.

M.I.A.’s albums have always served as her political soapboxes. Her latest—and purportedly last—AIM, is no different. M.I.A. has also been vocal about being a refugee for some three decades, as a persecuted Tamil from Sri Lanka living in the United Kingdom—a status that is particularly topical on AIM.

When Jack White debuted The White Stripes in Detroit in 1997, his band had two big selling points. Jack and his then wife Meg produced an explosive blues-rock sound marked by an almost childlike spontaneity and looseness. And they had style. With their stripped-down color palette, The White Stripes made an impact…

Do you prefer your Wilco wild, wooly, and electric, or soft-spoken and contemplative? The band—perhaps getting a little loopy in its advancing years—has made choosing one side of its personality or the other easy in the last 18 months, first knocking out the noisy, chugging Star Wars and now the downcast, simple Schmil…

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, in honor of Labor Day, we’re picking songs about work.

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, in honor of Labor Day, we’re picking songs about work.

One of the first games The A.V. Club devised when coming up with Talent Show was to have Chicago punks Meat Wave play a game of cornhole with assorted meats. It’s a simple premise and one that, in honor of our new food section, Supper Club, launching, is finally a reality. Enjoy all the gross meat-throwing and give…

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, in honor of Labor Day, we’re picking songs about work.

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

I have a soft spot for R.E.M.’s first sorta-greatest-hits collection, Eponymous, which collects (again, mostly) the hits from the band’s I.R.S. Records years. It was released not too long after Document, the record that introduced 13-year-old me to a band I’d love for a long time. It’s still, overall, my favorite…

It’s easy to take for granted the kinds of blurty, careening indie tunes David Gedge has been spewing for the last three decades. As leader of The Wedding Present, he’s rolled brittle C86 pop into meatier alt-rock, turning his band from sloppy Smiths to British cousins of Archers Of Loaf to some kind of dependable…

Eluvium makes ambient music for the masses. From his earliest EPs of minimalist piano suites to 2013’s sumptuous, sprawling Nightmare Ending, Portland’s Matthew Robert Cooper has composed his intricate, textural sonic landscapes with a rhythmic backbone, one that often results in melodies that can’t help but engage…

With the soft, synth-laden glow of “Intern,” Angel Olsen opens her third full-length with this defining statement: “Everyone I know has got their own ideal / I just wanna be alive, make something real.” She sounds almost tired, as if she’s had more than enough of hearing about what everyone else thinks she is. When…

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

Q And Not U: This D.C. band came in at the perfect time to grab the torch from Fugazi—Dischord even released their records. There’s a fantastic urgency to the first album, No Kill No Beep Beep, that gives way to a more groove-oriented, airy vibe on Different Damage. I had forgotten there was a third album, which I’m…