Wal-Mart continues it's complete domination of everything, including indie music

Wal-Mart is now endorsing indie bands, labeling them as the "next big thing". The French band Phoenix is the latest. I'm all for good bands becoming recognized and popular without changing for the label or the common people or "the man", but I'm tired of Wal-Mart having it's giant dollar-sign-shaped hand in EVERYTHING. Stick to what you know best: aging "classic rock" bands greatest hits albums, Nickelback, and maybe the next Kings of Leon album. Leave the rest alone.
To view the madness, click here

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so i'm a little late on this one....

The name of the band is Battles. Their album entitled Mirrored. Their sound: the soundtrack to the manufacturing and training of a futuristic army with one agenda, total world domination. This band will make even the slackest stoner put down the Pringles and pick up a purpose, even if that purpose is to find the best weed ever (or the tastiest can of Pringles). This is the music to move a generation...in a very methodical, robotic fashion towards greatness. It's almost entirely instrumental, which may turn some of you off, but dammit give it one listen. The few vocals that are here are distorted and hard to translate. The best are the Wizard of Oz soldier chant on helium on the second track "Atlas". Put on headphones and take a walk, or do some chores, and I guarantee you'll never feel lazy or lethargic again.

French kiss some french girls

Computers making music giving you a bad feeling in your insides? Does Autotune kinda make you throw up in your mouth a little every time you here it? Would you like to french kiss some French girls? Than let the Japanroids blow the harddrives of your modern music with their huge guitar noise rock jams. They are just a murderous drummer and a guitarist with an itchy distortion petal who play arty relentless noise punk rock about liking girls. But don't worry, they're not a buncha eyeliner wearing, snifflin emo losers, or whiney pop punk pussies. These guys love to get drunk and french kiss French girls

My only beef with Radiohead

Radiohead makes some of the most beautiful music of any modern rock band on the planet. Their intelligent interstellar musings are the soundtrack of every college student's lonely nights. My one complaint is that they don't rock out enough. "Bodysnatchers", the "hardest" song on their most recent In Rainbows, is Radiohead at their best: churning crunchy guitars that squeal and moan on Johnny Greenwood's command sending Thom Yorke's vocals running for their lives. This type of fury seems to be happening less and less in Radiohead's career and it saddens me so. Please guys, if you are out there listening....rock like it's 1995 again.

The First of the Funeral

It starts like sunshine through your window on the nicest day of the year. A cool breeze of piano keys and guitar chords rustles your hair as you open your eyes to the lyrics. You get up and put on a 5 year old pair of jeans you your favorite t-shirt and walk down to the coffee shop. Then you walk back home, get into your Japanese-made car and drive. Where? You don't know. Do you care? No. Anything and everything will happen today. It's a day that religious peoples would call a revelation. It's a day where you might leave and never come back. "Neighborhood #1" by the Arcade Fire is this day every time I hear it. Funeral, the album it appears on, is a religious experience and this is the first hallelujah.

The black Radiohead?

TV on the Radio is this generation’s Radiohead. Yeah, that’s right. You heard me. I’ll say it again so it will have a chance to rest upon your mortal ears and soak into your soul to be processed, and then thrown back at me like Linda Blair throws pea soup. You may argue TVOTR are from the U.S. and therefore not quite as cool, classy, and intelligent as their rotten-toothed counterparts. To that I say ladies and gentlemen, TVOTR are cooler because they are black. Yeah, that’s right. You heard me. You better get used to this sorta thing if you’re gonna read these rants again. Oh, and not only are they black, they look borderline homeless. Maybe they were a few homeless friends, singing important soul songs on some dirty street of some major city when a chubby, computer nerd with tattoos walks by and asks them if they want to start what will be the defining band of the early 2000s.
Radiohead is the type of band that is in an undefined category of rock; a place where sounds seem to be pulled out of thin air and contorted until they become part a melody. They are expanding the balloon of music around them to the busting point, and their songs will be covered by kids starting generation defining bands for decades to come. TVOTR are doing the same as we speak. True, they have yet to write a concept album (see OK Computer), or an electronic album (see Kid A), but they are throwing music in all new directions and placing the bar almost too high to even do pull-ups on. They are experiment without sacrificing melody, they use electronics without selling their souls. They will be around as long as indie rock is.

a spoon full of whiskey makes the sex go down

Jack White’s newest supergroup, The Dead Weather, would like to personally thank whiskey, cigarettes, and the devil for aiding them in the fight to keep rock n roll dirty and sexy. They will never be the White Stripes when it comes to innovation and the saving of rock music as we know it (remember the late nineties, early 2000?), but they are sludge factory of sex, smoke, and sweat that restores my faith in rock. White returns to the drums, his first instrument, stating that it is easier to produce songs when you control the rhythm and backbone of every song. Allison Mosshart of The Kills provides the sultry lead vocals, while White spits dueling backing from behind the kit. Mosshart seems liberated as White’s mistress of darkness than in her day job with the Kills. Dean Fertita is White’s guitar and organ puppet, laying down those distorted-with-dirt licks that we’ve all come to love from the Stripes. The guitars, not quite as stripped and simple as the Stripes, grind and moan with White’s seventies rock beats. Live, Mosshart resembles a better looking Mick Jagger, failing and dancing about almost preaching the faith of filth to the audience. Jack White can’t help himself; coming up to the forefront to rip the closing track “Will There Be Enough Water?” The answer: no there will never be enough water to put out White’s guitar inferno. Ladies, they will wet your panties, and gentlemen, they will pitch your tent. So put on their new album Horehound and grab a partner “by the hair, and hang [them] up from the heavens”.