I hate it when people describe music in terms of food with all the musical “ingredients” and a “dash” of this or that nonsense. It’s lazy and lame. And sometimes even creative writers like Andre 3000 stoop to the cliche. MTV News recently spoke with the more flamboyant half of Outkast with a headline as […]

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David Yow singing three part harmonies? Well, I doubt it sounds like a barbershop quartet. First of all, it’s David Yow, ex-leader of The Jesus Lizard, which guarantees nothing close to normal. And, secondly, the forthcoming Qui album is on Ipecac, which also guarantees weirdness. Yow joined Qui after hanging out like a creepy old […]

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[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/fQ5JiOeZwpc” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] Brighton’s The Maccabees are a British band worthy of the hype. Their off-kilter pop is a tight-lipped amalgamation of Blur, Wire, and XTC , which uncoils a controlled urgency with staccato melodies that don’t take too many listens to sink in. The band’s debut, Colour It In, comes out […]

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With a new, all-instrumental album, The Mix-Up, due out June 26, the Beastie Boys are returning a little more low-key than usual. King Adrock has an amusing back and forth with The Stranger’s Jonathan Zwickel. Adrock on selling out: “I don’t think that people buying records or whatever really give a shit if you make […]

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[kml_flashembed movie=”http://youtube.com/v/DoLaMR-KTes” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] This is an astounding performance of the Banshees’ classic “Love in a Void” on the BBC2 show, ‘Something Else.’ Robert Smith of The Cure played guitar for the band on the 1979 tour in support of Join Hands, the band’s second album, because guitarist John McKay had quit two […]

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Q Magazine has compiled its list of the top 10 most underwhelming follow-ups to smash debuts. It errs on the side of being overly English, but at least half of them are spot-on. The Stone Roses’ Second Coming justifiably tops the list (uhh, naming your album ‘second coming’ was begging for failure), followed closely by […]

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The folks behind the label that Bloc Party frontman, Kele Okereke, called a “nasty vortex” speaks with the puppet master of the Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLaren. When asked what he’s listening to these days he mutters something about how it’s all good and it’s all bad and then inexplicably compares pop culture to an old […]

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