To celebrate the new Iggy & The Stooges album Ready To Die, we invited guitarist James Williamson to rifle through eMusic's catalog and talk us through some of his favorite albums. You can read about the legendary guitarist's choices below. Andrew Perry interviews the band about their remarkable comeback album here. more »
I interviewed Golden Grrrls before their show with Brilliant Colors in Olympia; they had just flown from London to Seattle to start their first U.S. tour. We ordered pizza and sat on the floor of Bikini Kill Records HQ to get to know one other. I quickly discovered they're record nerds who prefer nothing more than to geek out about music: Drummer/vocalist Eilidh Rodgers works in a record store owned by Stephen Pastel where my… more »
It's a gorgeous spring afternoon on the Lower East Side, and Laura Stevenson is talking about death. Not her fear of it so much as its inevitability — the fact that it's coming for all of us, and there's nothing we can do to stop it. That she delivers the observation in a bright, chipper, skipping voice just makes it feel more ominous. That, in part, is one of the most bewitching things about Wheel, Stevenson's… more »
Still scarred from the backlash she endured for dissing George Bush 10 years ago, Natalie Maines has jettisoned any trace of the twang that survived the Dixie Chicks’ last album, Taking the Long Way, and has made her first real rock ‘n’ roll record. Mother is not merely a shift in musical direction or a crossover attempt; instead, it’s the sound of a woman fighting defiantly to redefine herself with a harder, steelier sound. Fortunately, Maines’s commanding voice remains intact. She nimbly navigates the slow build from soft melody to… more »
A lot happened very quickly for synth-pop chanteuse Little Boots: Her 2009 debut Hands generated hit UK singles, a gold album, worldwide tours and topped the BBC Sound of 2009 poll. What followed in the ensuing four-year gap between albums wasn’t quite silence: Victoria Hesketh filled it by DJing, making mixtapes and working with more club-oriented cohorts, such as Hercules and Love Affair’s Andy Butler and Simian Mobile Disco’s James Ford. But like her compatriot in ’80s-derived dance-pop La Roux, Boots has distanced herself from her initial hype simply by… more »
When a band makes music that is repeatedly, almost invariably, described as “ethereal” or “dreamy,” it’s fair to worry whether things might fall too far into the soup. Although the signifiers that often provoke these descriptions — heavy reverb; breathy, obscured vocals; layered effects; wading tempos — can produce a soaring, satisfying cumulative effect, the pitfalls are just as clear: Focus too much on piling up and tweaking lush sounds, an album can end up as a sort of unformed mass of pretty stuff.
Greg Hughes, the primary songwriter, producer,… more »
Marcus Ryan is a songwriter from Texas who wound up traveling to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Somewhere along the way, he found time to write and record Walk to the Light, an album full of lonely treatises about loss and redemption. The tunes are big in the sense that they are heavily produced, with power guitars, acoustic pianos and processed drums layered over hooky themes. The core of the pieces is the bedrock messages. Ryan leaves a woman in “If I Fly” and tells her, “It’s… more »
Calling all poseurs, dilettantes and part-time punks: Check your head and check your cred at the door. From Buzzcocks to Iceage, from dream-pop to chillwave, Gimme Indie Rock gives you the sickest vibes out of the scene that can't stand to be pigeonholed. Whether Dum Dum Girls or the Strange Boys, the Field Mice or Killer Mike, James Blake or PJ Harvey, you'll hear them all here — where it's totally OK to hang the… more »
