DIIV : Zirp!

DIIV set the bar pretty high for themselves with their 2012 debut Oshin. Touching on shoegaze, dream pop, and jangly guitar noodling of early 90s college rock, guitarist/frontman Zachary Cole Smith showed promise for some kind of shoegaze revival. Is The Is Are soon followed in 2016 with plenty of ambition and lots of personal […]

Queens of the Stone Age : Perfecth

For Queens of the Stone Age’s nearly 30 year career they have had plenty of ups, downs, over and outs, rinse and repeats. Coming from the ashes of Kyuss, frontman Josh Homme and bassist Nick Olivieri took the stoner/desert rock DNA from their childhood band and turned it into a cottage industry. Walking clumsily along […]

Weird Nightmare : Hoopla

Alex Edkins was the guitarist and vocalist for Canadian post/punk band METZ for well over a decade. When the noisy trio decided to go on hiatus a couple years back Edkins side project Weird Nightmare became his main gig. METZ was loud, abrasive, and savored the dissonance of guitar squall, fuzzy bass lines, and brash […]

Silversun Pickups : Tenterhooks

Of all the alt rock bands that came out of the mid-2000s alternative scene I didn’t expect Silversun Pickups to be in for the long haul. I dug their 2006 debut Carnavas, a mix of shoegaze haze and gnarled post-punk guitar that went down smooth. And “Lazy Eye” was a pretty fun, catchy tune that […]

Single Lash Return With Lush New Single “Now for the Real World”

Single Lash came out of the Austin music scene in a fervor of shimmering guitars, Goth romanticism, and a knack for repurposing the “college rock” sound of the 80s and early 90s. Not repurposing in a way that felt derivative in any way, but somehow channeling the magic of bands like Catherine Wheel, The Cure, […]

Kills Birds : Crave

When I was 18 oldies rock and roll were bands like the Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks, and surf music. Those bands seemed light years away from what I was listening to. Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, NIN, Garbage, etc…they were the future. The British Invasion and the Beach Boys were the past. Well fast forward 30 […]

Miki Berenyi Trio : Tripla

Lush were one of the big ones in terms of late 80s/early 90s shoegaze bands. Along with Ride, Chapterhouse, Slowdive, Swervedriver and My Bloody Valentine, Lush established their hazy, dreamy, and ghostly sound through delayed guitars, ghostly vocals, and guitarist/singer Miki Berenyi’s delivery. Berenyi’s vocals were clear, but always just a bit under the mix, […]

Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory : Self-Titled

I think Sharon Van Etten has always had a Goth queen inside of her just waiting to come out. Even from the very beginning her albums ached with the kind of doomed romanticism that Siouxsie Sioux, Kate Bush, and Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser trademarked back in the heyday of early 80s alternative. Van Etten leaned […]

The Cure : Songs Of A Lost World

There aren’t many bands that can take a 16 year break between albums without suffering some kind of hit. Most bands aren’t The Cure, though. The musical icons of grand melancholy and the Godfathers of goths everywhere have done just that. The last album Robert Smith and Co released was 2008s disappointing 4:13 Dream. It […]

The Smile : Cutouts

The Smile -the Radiohead side project of Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood- shouldn’t work as well as it does. Like Yorke’s solo albums and Greenwood’s film scores they are great listening experiences, but we’re always waiting for them to get back together with their Radiohead counterparts and give us another masterpiece. Since 2022 Yorke and […]