The only conceivable way this seven-song EP from Ambulance LTD — released as an appetite-whetter for the quartet’s second full-length, due later this year — could come across more British is if there were a scratch-‘n’-sniff circle on the booklet cover that smelled like fish and chips. Not that the…

¨Frances! Frances Bean… What are you doing up here, sweetie?¨ ¨I was just going through Daddy´s tapes, Mom. I wanna pick a song for the new album too!¨ ¨OK, honey, but we´ve only got room for three unreleased tracks, all right? The other 19 are coming from last year´s boxed…

Take heart, all you Pavement worshipers surveying the current reunion landscape: Face the Truth — the third solo album by Stephen Malkmus (with occasional contributions from his backing band, the Jicks) — is his first to truly do justice to the formidable legacy of the band he used to front…

The 42 songs on this three-CD Yo La Tengo career retrospective aren’t sequenced chronologically, but it wouldn’t much matter if they were. The two-decade tale of Hoboken, New Jersey,’s finest indie-rock band resists a linear celebration; rather than an evolutionary journey, it’s one of vast eclecticism and experimentation. The band’s…

In 1995, Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City federal building; thousands were being slaughtered in Bosnia and Rwanda; O.J. Simpson was acquitted of double murder; Forrest Gump beat out Pulp Fiction for the Best Picture Oscar; and Mickey Mantle died. But there was a tiny bright spot amid all…

Although I slept through my freshman micro-economics course far more than I attended, and thus am hardly an expert in such matters, I believe a band may safely be deemed “efficient” if it can make an entire album for $6 (no matter how long it takes) or in five days…

In terms of Detroit garage-punk street cred, Mick Collins is more bulletproof than a horde of flesh-eating zombies. The Stooges and the MC5 may have introduced blistering scuzz-rock to the Motor City, but the singer-guitarist almost single-handedly resurrected that glorious grime in the mid-’80s as the leader of the now-fabled…

Well, it’s official — more than a decade after their acrimonious split, seminal alt-rockers the Pixies are back. Sure, this comes as terrific news to some, but for a fan like myself, the idea makes me shudder. After all, it goes against one of the most immutable laws of the…

Psychedelic space rock and panoramic expressions. Gospel choirs and 18-month mixing sessions. Hundred-piece orchestras with their sweeping strings. These are a few of Jason Pierce’s favorite things. Or they were. A major departure from 2001’s ambitious, massively orchestral Let It Come Down, Spiritualized’s fifth studio album (which arrives barely two…

The world of Lady A — British-born chanteuse Anjali Bhatia — is a deliciously decadent dimension where Russ Meyer directs James Bond flicks on the streets of Calcutta, and orbiting spacecraft are equipped with fur-lined cocktail nooks, hot tubs, and Martin Denny LPs to facilitate swanky zero-gravity copulation. Sprawling strings,…

You know the old story: well-respected cult band achieves mainstream recognition, and the faithful followers go apoplectic. Or, as Morrissey once crooned, “We hate it when our friends become successful.” Well, after existing on the fringes of fame since their mid-’90s formation, New York City’s Fountains of Wayne has finally…

On her stunner of a second album, Rosie Thomas again shows that gestures needn’t be grand to be powerful. In some ways, her indie-folk sound has a lot in common with close pal, periodic collaborator, and fellow Seattle-ite Damien Jurado’s: fragile acoustic guitars and piano, gently tapped drums, and whispers…

Joe Strummer was well into his life’s second act when a heart attack felled him last December at age 50. After more than a decade of relative silence following the dissolution of the Clash, the iconic singer-guitarist finally came to terms with his past and started looking toward the future…

“Damn, I didn’t know! It hasn’t been on the telly here yet. That’s terrible,” exclaims Supergrass singer-guitarist Gaz Coombes, immediately lowering his voice to say “that’s terrible” again. He turns his mouth away from the receiver to relay the bad news to long-time girlfriend Jools. “Johnny Cash died,” he tells…

Think of electroclash as the NASDAQ circa spring 2000, when it crashed and burned after the hype finally subsided. Now think of Client as a dot-com trying to make a buck by rolling out an IPO in the midst of that environment. The duo’s hackneyed formula confronts you well before…

Thomas Wolfe once said, “You can’t go home again,” but he never ran into Perry Farrell. Repeatedly given up for dead, both literally and career-wise, the 44-year-old singer is darkening our doorstep again. This summer finds Farrell resurrecting both Jane’s Addiction and Lollapalooza, the traveling festival originally conceived as the…

From their formation in 1979 to their dissolution in 1997, the Cocteau Twins traveled far above the clouds and well below the radar. In Britain, the group’s legendary, uniquely divine ethereal-pop atmospherics earned heaps of critical praise and established a sound and vision for the renowned English indie label 4AD,…

Dean Wareham has been down this road before. Back in 1997, the Luna frontman and his then-wife, filmmaker Claudia Silver, recorded an odd little covers album under the moniker Cagney & Lacee, but their endeavor was definitely more of a miss than a hit. Six years later, Wareham’s giving the…