Last year we spent Thanksgiving Eve with our patrons and friends sharing new music we were thankful for during a difficult year. 2021 has presented its own challenges, but we're lucky to have so many musical artists and creatives to turn to for escape. From the metal and hard rock of Iron Maiden, Danko Jones, and Mammoth WVH to the trip-hop of Morcheeba, Sneaker Pimps, and...

Out of the fertile Chapel Hill, North Carolina scene emerged Polvo at the start of the 1990s. Their sound is lumped into math rock, a term the band themselves reject, but the elements are there - progressive rock filtered through an indie lens. On their 1993 sophomore album Today's Active Lifestyles, you'd be hard-pressed to find any evidence of Jethro Tull, Yes, or Emerso...

The 1990s definitely saw its fair share of pastiche in music from The Rolling Stones raunch of The Black Crowes to the underground Los Angeles swing revival that briefly bubbled into the mainstream. Out in San Francisco, The Brian Jonestown Massacre was taking full advantage of the Haight-Ashbury vibes to experiment with sounds old and new, dabbling in shoegaze, psychedeli...

Almost six years to the day, we revisited the debut album Earth Vs. The Wildhearts by the UK hard rock band. All the ingredients were there for us to love and champion this band, but for various reasons, we were both underwhelmed and disappointed. Thanks to a member of our Patreon Union, we're giving The Wildhearts a second shot with their 1995 follow-up P.H.U.Q. Far from ...

Country, blues, and gospel are a winning combination. So are mixing trip-hop with acid house. But what if we threw that all into a big stew, layered it with a John Prine cover, Jim Jones (of Jonestown infamy) audio samples, and a druggy, capitalist critiquing, night-on-a-bender lyrical bent that also stayed away from strident political commentary while being entirely polit...

Just like how the 1990s produced hundreds of alternative bands signed to major labels that barely made a dent in radio, MTV, or Billboard, the 80s had their fair share of obscure and forgotten acts of might-have-beens. Those rock bands that straddled the line between the two decades often suffered the worst, coming in at the tail end of hair/glam rock dominance into the em...

Band reunions aren't new, as some of the best-selling and most well-known bands have gone on hiatus or broken up for extended periods of time. Back in 2015, we discussed 1990s rock bands that had broken up and gotten back together. Six years have passed, and more bands have reunited, released material, or at least toured. We decided to revisit the topic and discuss bands l...

Before Creeper Lagoon scored a minor hit with "Wrecking Ball" on their 2001 major label, radio-friendly alternative rock album Take Back The Universe and Give Me Yesterday, the band released a much more intimate debut. 1998's I Become Small and Go, co-produced in part by John King of The Dust Brothers, finds an even balance between catchy indie-pop, and more produced and l...

He's an outlier, an enigma, an iconoclast, an original. We're talking about Tom Waits, whose career is more closely tied to the 70s and 80s, but who released his Grammy Award-winning album Bone Machine in 1992 just as the first wave of grunge was talking off in 90s rock. Trying to compare Waits, and this album in particular, to any of his contemporaries, is a fool's errand...

In popular culture, whether it's music, films, books, or television, the idea of a Guilty Pleasure has existed as long as people have formed opinions on entertainment. High versus low art, serious versus inconsequential, intimate versus manufactured - everyone has their own criteria. We discuss the power of shame, such as when a once-popular genre falls out of favor, or wh...