New Age for Iceage Iceage. (Credit: Alva de Febvre) Recently, that other long-running music magazine published a list of the 100 Greatest Punk Albums and their picks left me pondering the exact boundaries of punk (which, admittedly, is not a very punk thing to do). Like, if a band’s first album is punk, are they […]

Go Back to the Beginning With The Smashing Pumpkins Smashing Pumpkins on May 10, 1991 in Chicago, Il. (Credit: Paul Natkin/WireImage) It’s hard to think of the Smashing Pumpkins in terms of smallness. There was a time before the cultural shakedown of Siamese Dream (1993) and the monolithic 28-track Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness […]

David Torn Rips It Up and Starts Again  David Torn. (Credit: Jon Slackman) Did David Torn steal Lou Reed’s band? Probably not—the members of Torn’s early 1980s fusion ensemble Everyman Band, who released two albums on the storied ECM label, have all played with the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal during in the late ’70s, but […]

What Can the BLUETTI Elite 300 Actually Run? Our Real-World Home, Outdoor, and Solar Charging Test This post is sponsored by BLUETTI. All testing, opinions, and real-world notes are our own. Portable power stations are becoming as ubiquitous to camping and rv/van life as they are to emergency home backup power users and off gridders. […]

Marisa Anderson Reaches Beyond Musical and Man-Made Borders On New Album Marisa Anderson Reaches Beyond Musical and Man-Made Borders On New Album Marisa Anderson has long been a Portland, Oregon, icon, lending authenticity and a gritty Americana sensibility to Stumptown’s vibrant music scene. Often, Anderson resides in the same musical landscape once inhabited by the […]

When Things Go Wrong Abroad, WorldTrips Atlas Nomad Insurance Steps In This post was created in partnership with WorldTrips and features Atlas Nomad travel insurance. As always, we only work with brands we believe are genuinely useful for travelers, and all opinions expressed here are our own. There’s a version of travel most of us […]

Jeff Parker’s ‘Happy Today’ Glows In Slow Motion Jeff Parker EVA IVtet (photo: Sam Lee) “Where’s Jeff?” The question weighed heavily at Tortoise’s live shows over the past year, during which his integral contribution to the Chicago instrumental legends’ heady sound was often missed. Indeed, it seems the L.A.-based guitarist is focusing on his solo […]

MUNA Makes Anxiety Sound Euphoric On New LP MUNA (photo: Dean Bradshaw) The reactionary forces that have seized America continue to try to erase queer people from public life, but MUNA will be damned if it lets some bigots ruin its good time. And while many of us hit the dance floor to forget our […]

No Man, (Mostly) No Problem: Kacey Musgraves Roams Free (photo: Christine Sutton) On Middle of Nowhere, Kacey Musgraves doesn’t so much return to her roots as redraw the map entirely — one where solitude isn’t a pit stop between relationships but the destination itself. Written in the aftermath of a breakup and shaped by long […]

Older, Sadder, Better: American Football Leans In On ‘LP4’ (photo: Alexa Viscius) On its improbable third album since reuniting in 2014 after a 14-year hiatus, American Football isn’t interested in reclaiming youth so much as interrogating what came after it. The Sonny DiPerri-co-produced LP4 (Polyvinyl) doesn’t just revisit the band’s long-established emotional palette – it […]