Talking Heads: I’m not as huge a Talking Heads fan as I probably should be, though I do have that big, complete box set around here somewhere. Probably time to take that thing for a spin, and I can get rid of Remain In Light because this is just a double. Also, my favorite Talking Heads thing might actually be True…

In Under The Influence, The A.V. Club asks a musician to pair three of their songs with a non-musical influence.

At the Chicago edition of this year’s Riot Fest The A.V. Club put together a questionnaire for bands to answer. They were four open-ended questions followed by a round of word association, and then a shot of Chicago’s favorite beverage, Malort. We’ll be releasing a video each day with answers—and grimacing faces— from…

Everybody I tell about this—and I’ve become something of an evangelist/annoyance on this matter—is surprised, so I guess there are still some people left for me to convert. Did you know that most public libraries allow you to check e-books out on your Kindle (or other device), and that they automagically disappear…

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.

Kiefer Sutherland might be back to protecting the nation from various threats (on TV), but he’s keeping one cowboy boot firmly planted in the music industry. Sutherland, who launched a record label while working on 24, released his debut album Down In A Hole just last month. It’s a folk-tinged and deeply confessional…

At the Chicago edition of this year’s Riot Fest The A.V. Club put together a questionnaire for bands to answer. They were four open-ended questions followed by a round of word association, and then a shot of Chicago’s favorite beverage, Malort. We’ll be releasing a video each day with answers—and grimacing faces— from…

Think of some bands that have been around for 30 years. Now narrow that list down to those that are still any good. In this light—and so many others—Neurosis is exceptional. From its undeniable influence upon post-metal, to the band’s founding of a record label that’s time and again changed the musical landscape,…

LVL UP occupies a strange space in the current indie-rock landscape—as much as the term indie rock means anything anymore. Half the band runs Double Double Whammy Records, the label responsible for Mitski’s Bury Me At Makeout Creek, Eskimeaux’s O.K., and Frankie Cosmos’ Zentropy, records that helped launch some of the…

Beach Slang’s acclaimed debut The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us was a catalog of the trials and tribulations of youth. Eleven months later, frontman James Alex, a father in his 40s, seems to have acknowledged that he’s grown up some. True to its title, sophomore record A Loud Bash Of Teenage Feelings…

At the Chicago edition of this year’s Riot Fest The A.V. Club put together a questionnaire for bands to answer. They were four open-ended questions followed by a round of word association, and then a shot of Chicago’s favorite beverage, Malort. We’ll be releasing a video each day with answers—and grimacing faces— from…

At the Chicago edition of this year’s Riot Fest The A.V. Club put together a questionnaire for bands to answer. They were four open-ended questions followed by a round of word association, and then a shot of Chicago’s favorite beverage, Malort. We’ll be releasing a video each day with answers—and grimacing faces— from…

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin: The name is memorable (though pretty awful), but this Missouri band’s music has always been kind of in one ear and out the other for me. It’s vaguely (or maybe not so vaguely) Shins-like. Sorry, co-worker and friend Leo, I still like your collection of SSLYBY T-shirts. Purging…

At some point in the ’90s, Sunny Day Real Estate’s Jeremy Enigk received the label “The Godfather Of Emo.” It’s a moniker that has always seemed insufficient, if not solely for the obvious fact that Jeremy Enigk isn’t an emo musician, and Sunny Day Real Estate isn’t an emo band. If anything, it would be more accurate…

Cymbals Eat Guitars is a “blog rock” survivor. Cymbals emerged in 2009 with Why There Are Mountains, the product of a bunch of high school buddies self-releasing a record without any expectations. But like so many bands that had that derisive term shoved upon it, the record caught on, hard and fast. At a time when Pitc…

Hardcore has always defined itself as a close-knit community, especially underlined by the youth-crew movement of the early to mid-’80s. The bands often lack pomp and frills, the kids dress down, and together everyone assumes an almost implicit underdog mentality. Because for all its aggression, hardcore is predicated…

For more than 15 years, Against Me! has explored Laura Jane Grace’s private interactions with various political realities that annoy and exasperate her; going public as a transgender woman in 2012 opened the door to a fresh trove of such material for 2014’s Transgender Dysphoria Blues. Having said so much on that…

The Pick A Choice deck is a fickle thing, and it makes no guarantees that its famous names will be especially famous. The card for late singer and sitcom star Nell Carter has already made a couple of appearances this season; her obscurity vexes musician Ben Folds as he plays his first round of our game. So what does…

By now, it’s nearly impossible to find an article about Jeff Rosenstock that doesn’t compare him to Fugazi or that band’s figurehead, Ian MacKaye. It’s a fair comparison given that, for the past 11 years, his own do-it-yourself ethics have been at the forefront of his every move—even to the point of refusing financial…

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.