The early, formative period of rock and roll criticism produced three great and indelible voices, three voices that have gone on to influence every writer who has written about popular music in the years since. Those three voices belong to Richard Meltzer, Lester Bangs, and Greil Marcus. Bangs died young, and Marcus has drifted off into a phase where his muscles, at least to this reader, are more academic than hortatory. …more

Maine-born, Brookyln-based musician Luke Rathborne is still in his early 20s, but he is already off to a promising start.  Rathborne has opened for the Strokes and played with Devendra Banhart, among other accolades. …more

California native Chelsea Wolfe has returned, after her first album, The Grime and the Glow, to the aural world with Ἀποκάλυψις, pronounced “Apokalypsis.” …more

Since the early 1980’s, the 51 year old Scottish musician/writer/provocateur Nicholas Currie, better known as Momus, has been releasing music (his latest album, Hypnoprism, was his 18^th) to varying levels of critical and commercial success. Since the 1990’s, he has been blogging in various forms, most notably on his old LiveJournal called Click Opera, which Warren Ellis called “probably the best-written blog on the Anglophone web” and of which novelist Dennis Cooper said, “It doesn’t get any better than Click Opera.” …more

For an entire decade, between 1975 and 1985, Brian Eno could do no wrong. In fact, even for the four or five years before 1975 he could do no wrong. …more

I call James McMurtry late one morning when I’m visiting Austin, Texas. By now, I’ve seen him play three times, in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and California, and I’m always struck by the way audiences in different parts of the country identify with his songs. …more

Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn (born in 1974) came up in the fertile Olympia scene of the late ’90s. She was part of the K Records renaissance along with bands like the Microphones, the Blow and Old Time Relijun – all highly distinct, idiosyncratic groups with Calvin Johnson’s influence perhaps manifesting in the form of a primitivist or intentionally naïve approach. …more

I was 19 years old when I first witnessed the achingly beautiful sounds of Fred and Toody Cole and Andrew Loomis. They were called Dead Moon. …more

Wild Flag, S/T (Merge) / live at The Bowery Ballroom, NYC, 10/18/11

Eleanor Friedberger, best known as half of The Fiery Furnaces, sings the ultra-catchy, ’70s-damaged “My Mistakes.” …more

make me young again / make me well

When I listen to the Mountain Goats I always hear traveling—a ceaseless forward momentum. …more

It’s Christmas morning, 2001 and I’m fifteen. I unwrap a record player, but am more immediately captivated by the record collection that comes with it. …more

The Icelandic musician and composer Jóhann Jóhannsson specializes in disparate, subtly moving themes and careful musings on the ways in which industry and society intersect. …more

Joni Mitchell’s Blue may have been released one summer seven years before I was born, but it’s a winter album that conjures memories of me, my mom and my little sister. …more

On Monday, Nov. 25, 1991, my mother woke me up with a knock on the door.

“What’s the name of that singer you love so much?” she asked, cigarette and coffee in hand. “Because he’s on the news.” …more

I discovered Dar Williams back in high school when I was, misguidedly, trying to be a singer-songwriter. …more

1. Love Letter

I experienced my first categorically bisexual three-way—a completely unexpected yet unforgettable coming-of-age story—when I was 15. …more

John Wesley Harding has been making really sweet tunes since 1988. His 12th release The Sound of Your Own Voice, which came out in October, features a star-studded group of musicians including members of the Decemberists, Peter Buck, Laura Viers and Roseanne Cash. …more

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Mirror Traffic (Matador) / live at Webster Hall, NYC, 9/25/11

“I’m also a Jick.”
—Stephen Malkmus, Amoeba Hollywood in-store appearance, 8/24/11

Mirror Traffic opens with a fake-out. …more

Of the many adjectives one would use to describe me—some might even be positive—sexy would not be one of them. …more

I’ve been wondering if  R.E.M. purposefully scheduled their break-up announcement for autumn. …more

Mike Doughty is a singer-songwriter of a particularly urban sort, whose compositions, though guitar-based and often not terribly far from the ideal of the busker, are, nonetheless, cross-pollinated by just about everything audible in New York City …more

Nikolai Fraiture, bass player for The Strokes, interviews Jay Griffiths about her book Wild: …more

His loneliness lay around me like a fence. The promise was that once I solved the loneliness the fence would dissipate. But I couldn’t solve it. …more

As an acne-faced and awkward wannabe punk rock teenager, I knew who Iggy Pop was. I knew who he was because a lot of the Goth girls I would meet at parties and teen dance clubs were way into his newest album, Blah Blah Blah, which was kind of okay, but wasn’t hard or fast enough for me right then. …more

“Well, excuuuuuuuuuse me!” my mother says from the kitchen when we complain about baked chicken again.  ”Well excuuuuuuuuuuuse me!” grumbles my father when we change the channel from the Auburn game to Elvira’s Movie Macabre. …more

Do you still remember the Internet of last week, just another barrage of all-over-the-place political and cultural events in which millions of people watched, reacted and interacted online? …more

As the opening band left the stage, before the house lights had lifted, …more

“I miss you; I’m not gonna crack”

I was 14 and following older kids through the woods. …more

A few years ago Steve Koester, the frontman of the band Two Dark Birds, cut a considerable amount of static out of his life, started spending more time with his wife and daughter and thousands of trees, and wrote and recorded the songs on a beautiful new record called Songs for the New. …more

In July I speak to Jolie Holland on the phone the morning after she plays Norman, Oklahoma, two weeks into her tour to support her new record, Pint of Blood. …more