At eMusic, we take pride in being the place you hear about artists first. Whether it's through our eMusic Selects program - which brought you the first releases by Best Coast, Crystal Stilts, Strand of Oaks and more - or our Breaking Artist features, our editorial team is always on the grind to bring you the best new artists first. Our eMerging Artists station is your chance to be first on the Next Big Thing. more »
Indie-rock in the '00s was hardly the same animal as indie-rock two decades before, and much of the blame should probably go to Nirvana. In the '80s, labels like SST and Touch & Go were built on testosterone. But when grunge went multiplatinum in the '90s, rock bands brandishing palpable physicality suddenly qualified as mainstream again, and the bigger indies started adopting a more effete and introverted aesthetic. So if you skim down a list… more »
James Joyce wrote that his weapons as an artist would be "silence, exile and cunning." Silence isn't generally useful for musicians, and cunning comes with the territory for anyone who wants to play the pop-music game of one-upmanship. In 2004, though, a lot of the best indie records latched onto exile as a weapon, or as a metaphor, or even as their central subject. The international political landscape had collapsed into a mess of lies,… more »
Ronald Thomas Clontle is the author of Rock, Rot & Rule, a controversial music reference book that purports to be "the ultimate argument settler" when it comes to rating an artist's worth. In the book, the uncompromising Clontle ranks thousands of artists under the three headings listed in the book's title (rock = good, rot = bad, rule = great), based on various stringent criteria and extensive surveys. With the newly updated 2007 edition of… more »