1-girl:2-boy Amerindie Trio Licks, 2003

CORDELIA’S DAD “Jane”/”Promise”/“Closing Year” Last year, in “Camile’s Not Afraid of the Barn,” these indie-rock-moonlighting Massachusetts folk festival standbys set mysterious words about beached sharks, pellet guns, Chinatown firecrackers, and the smell of dirtbikes to a riff from “Jane Says” by Jane’s Addiction. Their new three-inch CD EP leads, coincidentally, with a traditional upstate-NY ballad…

Baader Meinhof review, 1997

Can’t argue with 100% certainty that he’s a better singer than say the Suede guy or a better songwriter than say the Pulp guy, but as melodicists they don’t come close, and Luke Haines would remain my favorite ’90s Britpop auteur (small praise, but still) even if that wasn’t his primary band’s name. The album…

G.G. Allin review, 1987

Snark, pure and simple (okay, paired with a pinch of one-upmanship I suppose), prodded by my annoyance of at an early example of the tiresome hipster schtick of pretending to like (or actually liking, who cares) music by a mentally ill person — in this case, a presumably dangerous and smelly one. In retrospect, I…

Outsider Proto-Punk Reissue Licks, 2003

MICHAEL YONKERS BAND, Microminiature Love St. Paul, Minnesota, 1968. Techie-teen leader of Michael and the Mumbles tires of twanging surf ditties at prom and VFW crowds, so he saws down his Fender and slashes open his speakers and lets his ominous baritone vibrato’s pomped-up medieval-castle Procol Harum poetry fall into black holes of Link Wray-reverbed…

3 Indie Rock single reviews, 2004

Grandaddy: “The Rugged and Splintered Entertainment Center” Over repeated Casio tinkles playing an organ-grinder/boombah-stick oompah, and opening appropriately enough with a fake warp (unless that’s just my own worn-out turntable belt fucking up), a lonely where-oh-where-are-you-tonight campfire hymn to man’s best friend—namely, the trusty cabinet containing your TV, VCR, crappy receivers, eyesore knickknacks, and gallons…

The Offspring profile, 1995

I dunno, maybe I gave the subjects of my only Spin cover story ever short shrift in my top 150 albums of 1994/’95 list. The singles on Smash are swell. But beyond that, I just get irritated. Maybe I’ll be able to hear pop-punk again after another decade or two, when I’m in my 70s…

Everclear review, 1997

One of my few section-fronting (and therefore longer) lead reviews in Spin. For some reason I don’t get, Generation Xers (or youngers) who write about music do not seem to remember Art Alexakis all that fondly. Perhaps they just weren’t old enough for him at the time. Spin, November 1997

Bad Brains profile, 1987

Frank Kogan had a field day way back when with my delusion that anger is an emotion that needs to be “earned,” whatever that could conceivably mean. (I blame my guilt-ridden Catholic upbringing.) Also, had I been aware at the time, it would’ve made sense to inquire about Bad Brains’ now well-documented history of homophobia,…

The Donnas review, 1998

Flipping the jailbait groupie script that had defiled hard rock since it came to be, the Donnas had their concept down from the start. All they needed to do from here was master more and more Ratt and Crüe chords, to kickstart the use-’em-up-and-toss-’em-out’s heart. Spin, March 1988

Lawnmower Death review, 1992

After publishing Stairway to Hell in 1991, my ears still bleeding from its 500 albums, I barely wanted to hear any new heavy metal for several years. The few albums I did listen to and review, if I could tolerate them at all, tended to wind up among 100 additions in the book’s updated- through-the-decade…