Well I guess it began towards the end of 1996 when I received a call from [head of Magna Carta Records] Pete Morticelli and [head of Shrapnel Records] Mike Varney who wanted to put together a couple of “Super Groups” (for lack of a better term!). One turned into the Black Light Syndrome project with…
Placebo (1996) – 3 stars Without You I’m Nothing (1998) – 4.5 stars Black Market Music (2000) – 4 stars Sleeping With Ghosts (2003) – 3.5 stars Meds (2006) – 5 stars Battle for the Sun (2009) – 3.5 stars Placebo, I suppose you could say, is a cult band, one of those prototypical you-get-them-or-you-don’t…
Yesterday a package arrived. By the Amazon logo printed on the side of the box, I knew it was finally time to crack open new material from Transatlantic, Buckethead, and Jupiter Sunrise. That last one in particular excited me since an ad for the cd, May the Box Burn Down around You, was the first…
Here’s the concept. I consider each of The Beatles’ twelve studio albums in their best form (i.e. their British releases) and rank them according to which albums I most want to listen to, end to end, right now. I’m ignoring the Yellow Submarine soundtrack (which most people like to pretend doesn’t exist) but including Help!,…
As far as I’m concerned, there’s no greater loss to music than the suicide of Ian Curtis at the age of 23. There’s no one I’d rather bring back for a couple decades of recording than him. That’s because the heights reached by him and his band, Joy Division, in their brief existence, are both…
Historians tell us that the world’s first jingle was written by the minstrel Bartholomew the Profitable in 986 CE. Hired by Percival of Shropshire to help sell chicken-bone dice, Bart traversed the countryside playing to captive audiences, replacing his traditional opener “The Tale of Sir Ywain the Bastard” with a ballad of 652 stanzas in…
This is Grant’s half of the Pinkerton point-counterpoint review. Read Dan’s half here. Pinkerton is the sound of a band afraid to become great. Representing a comeback after the hiatus Weezer took in response to their debut album’s surprise success, it doesn’t so much as reinvent the band as push their less desirable attributes to…
This is Dan’s half of the Pinkerton point-counterpoint review. Read Grant’s half here. I have this funny image in my head of Rivers Cuomo, the bespectacled frontman and songwriter of Weezer, performing the music of his first album in neatly trimmed suit with a smile. Then, just as the fans start yawning “novelty” and move…
Twenty-five percent of the songs on Three Days Grace’s debut album ended up Top-5 singles. Twenty-five percent of the songs on Three Days Grace’s sophomore album ended up Top-5 singles. Do we understand each other? There is no room to question the credentials of Three Days Grace. As Canada’s premier alternative-metal missionaries, they bring the…
Silent Alarm (2005) – 3 1/2 stars A Weekend in the City (2007) – 4 1/2 stars Intimacy (2008) – 4 stars Bloc Party exploded right out of the gate in 2005 as one of the most acclaimed bands in this decade’s post-punk revival phase. Their debut album, Silent Alarm, managed the tricky feat…