First things first: Mecca Normal has some heavy-duty detractors. In “Skip Tracer,” Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo dismisses Jean Smith’s lyrics as “the poetic truths of high school journal keepers,” her...
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I’m almost certain I heard exactly zero songs by You Am I back in their ‘90s heyday. To a typical Yank like myself, it may seem odd to refer to...
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The short-lived, Boston-area band Helium is probably not anyone’s A-List indie-alt-rock material. Frontwoman Mary Timony sings as if swimming through a cough syrup cloud, her voice rolling in and around...
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For a brief two or three years, there was a huge wave of shoegaze bands coming out of the UK. In a general sense, the shoegaze genre fused the swirling,...
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For me, at least, Morrissey has always walked a fine line. His mopey crooning can be incredibly affecting, or it can veer toward maudlin. The two keys to success seem...
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I don’t remember how I first heard of Belly, but I know I picked up their debut Star fairly soon after it came out in early 1993. I already owned...
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It’s always a bit of a joke with Richard D. James, a.k.a. Aphex Twin. His first album promised a set of ambient tunes and delivered exactly none (at least by...
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Alt-rock had many faces, and the most well-known (although certainly not most numerous) might be that of the Seattle grunge-rock scene and their like-minded peers across the country. The grunge...
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Nowadays, Built to Spill is considered one of the original mainstays of indie rock, with a trio of mid-to-late-‘90s albums under their belt considered indie-rock classics. But they were fairly...
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My exposure to rap music during my first couple years of grad school (1993-95) was quite limited in comparison to what it had been in undergrad. I really don’t remember...
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