Nirvana S/t Geffen By: Eric Greenwood Despite the legal train wreck impeding its release, this Nirvana retrospective kind of gets the blood flowing again. Regardless of whether you give Kurt Cobain's songwriting an ounce of credit or not, Nirvana changed the course of music, which sounds utterly bombastic and over the top, but it's true. […]

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Ride Nowhere Sire By: Eric Greenwood Ride’s first proper album propelled the band to cult status in 1990 in the aftermath of The Stone Roses' massively influential debut. Nowhere expanded the wash of guitar architecture of the band's previous two EPs: Play and Smile- a style similarly pursued by bands like My Bloody Valentine, The […]

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Bright Eyes Lifted Or The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground Saddle Creek By: Eric Greenwood It's far too easy to hate Conor Oberst and, therefore, just dismiss him out of hand. That quavering voice still makes me want to throttle his neck sometimes, but I've got to hand it […]

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Pulp We Love Life Rough Trade/sanctuary By: Eric Greenwood After the dark, hedonistic downer that was 1998’s This Is Hardcore, Pulp returns with the most optimistic and, well, pleasant album of its career. We Love Life is so laid back and serene that it blends into the background, forcing repeated listenings just to absorb its […]

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Ben Kweller Sha Sha Ato By: Eric Greenwood Now that he's old enough to have something substantive to say, Ben Kweller reinvents himself, somewhat deceptively, as a sarcastic slacker songwriter in the tradition of Stephen Malkmus and Rivers Cuomo. Kweller spent the late 1990's as the child prodigy star of the Texas trio, Radish, which, […]

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Future Bible Heroes Eternal Youth Instinct By: Eric Greenwood Even genius songwriters with buckets of talent to spare have their weak moments, and Future Bible Heroes has long been Stephin Merritt's flimsiest endeavor. I think it's because of his lack of control over the proceedings. Merritt shares the songwriting with his old pal Christopher Ewen […]

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Interpol Turn On The Bright Lights Matador By: Eric Greenwood From the first notes of Turn On The Bright Lights I knew that all of my preconceived notions about Interpol were wrong. I imagined a fey, new wave throwback similar to The Faint based on photographs of these guys in conjunction with all the heavy-handed […]

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