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Jeff Mangum doesn’t want to taste your insides. He even said so on “Gardenhead (Leave Me Alone),” a track off both a 1993 cassette called “Hype City Soundtrack” and Neutral Milk Hotel’s debut long player, the 1996 “On Avery Island.” Three years separating the different versions allowed for considerable reworking and some fuller orchestration—a trait NMH would claim as a stylistic tattoo—including various brass and tiny instruments. What the time between an early nineties cassette and a semi-professional album during the decade’s second half allowed for was Mangum to trip along the music world, see that folks he’d already befriended were best as collaborators and then to redouble efforts with his chosen cohort. Read the rest of this entry »

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Catching early live gigs by Brooklyn’s Pterodactyl, which trekked the country with Parts and Labor a good ways back, onlookers were likely to be shoving against a tide of bounding dancers in spaces unfit for large crowds, or just looking on, kinda dumbstruck. The band’s first disc, a self-titled effort issued a few years into Pterodactyl’s career, belies the image of a bird surrounded by a swath of blue featured on its cover. Inside, tracks like “Three Succeed” and “Rampage 1” bristle with bassy abandon while sometimes-sensible melodies float out amid Joe Kremer’s lyrics. Read the rest of this entry »

The Lemonheads' Evan Dando

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While it’s clear that we don’t all have the same sort of disposable income as a few years back, strangely, though, there hasn’t been a dramatic drop-off of iWhatever sales of late. People are also buying cars, even prompting GM to hire back handfuls of day-laborers. The fact that the middle class is no more or less screwed than it was a decade or so back probably didn’t play into Evan Dando’s decision to pick up some backing players and hit the road with a live rendition of his band’s 1992 album “It’s a Shame About Ray.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Some of the best and some of the worst music sounds like it was made by artists on a boatload of drugs. Cameron Stallones’ “Sun Araw,” a solo recording endeavor and live road-act, deals in both. Stallones started dishing out albums under the auspices of Sun Araw in 2008. Working on as many Not Not Fun Records-associated acts as humanly possible (Magic Lantern and its high-viscosity recording endeavors deserving of particular distinction), a torrent of releases followed, too many to keep track of unless one falls under the heading of collector-scum.

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Songs from Frankie Rose and the Outs aren’t any more tuneful than those from either the Vivian Girls or Dum Dum Girls. Of course, that latter group might only be meaningful to listeners as concerned with what their favorite musicians are wearing as they are with the music’s quality. But as a drummer for both those latter ensembles, in addition to the vastly more engaging Crystal Stilts, Frankie Rose has displayed a penchant for updated garage and girl-group stuff. Varying only slightly from band to band, it’d seem that the basic formula for these ensembles almost defies founding individual groups. Read the rest of this entry »

Mavis Staples

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Saying goodbye to summer means a farewell to beaches, outdoor seating and, perhaps the saddest of all, festivals. Fear not! The Hideout is squeezing the last out of the festival fun with the return of its legendary block party after a two-year absence. Perhaps the most impressive element of the festival is the diversity of style of the artists. The ten-hour event is a variable platter of sound, and it all looks delicious.

Andrew Bird, the biggest name on the bill, will provide the intricate indie tunes he’s known for. Lofty soul calling your name? Mavis Staples and her syrupy low voice at your service. To take that one step further, Booker T. Jones will be around to inject some serious funk into said soul. Read the rest of this entry »

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Music geeks should really be thankful that festivals like All Tomorrow’s Parties and Lollapalooza are able to toss around interesting sums of money, coaxing would-be disbanded acts out of the shadows. The Olivia Tremor Control, which was briefly summoned back to the stage in 2005 for ATP, has become another revival act of sorts after its ten-year hiatus. As a part of the Elephant 6 Collective, a wide ranging association of pop-psych bands including everyone from the Apples in Stereo to Jeff Mangum’s Neutral Milk Hotel, this group gained underground acclaim during its initial run between 1992 and 1999. Releasing a few long-players brought out the major-label vultures and, with reasonable suspicion, the group decided to take a break for a bit in lieu of signing away the rights to new music in order to pull in a big, corporate payday. Read the rest of this entry »

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If there’s one band out there to induce a big dopey smile on your face, it’s the Fruit Bats. These Chicago folk rockers are masters of being breezy, led by singer/songwriter Eric D. Johnson, a former instructor at the Old Town School of Folk Music. They’re bringing it all back home on September 8, with a new album, “Tripper,” in tow. Read the rest of this entry »

When Tigers Jaw’s vocalist Adam McIlwee croons “you are everything and I am nothing” on “Chemicals,” the fourth track on the band’s self-titled 2008 record, it can be very hard to stomach. There’s a terrifying level of teen angst ridden in McIlwee’s lyrics that have the potential to put many people off. Yet once you come to grips with the fact that they are a young, emotional band (I’m sure things are introspectively stressful down in Scranton, Pennsylvania), then there is a lot to enjoy in Tigers Jaw’s take on nineties college indie-rock. Read the rest of this entry »

By R. Clifton Spargo and Anne K. Ream

These days there’s something slightly anachronistic about Arctic Monkeys—the thrumming, heavily compressed moodiness of the sound, song after song about time taking its toll, super-psychedelic lyrics that occasionally seem dug up from a time capsule circa 1968. All too happy to let producer James Ford hone a sixties vibe on their latest release, “Suck It and See,” the onetime darlings of indie rock seem to be daring critics to call them a “has-been” band. How far back were you thinking? How far back exactly would you like us to go? Read the rest of this entry »