Eliza Rickman just might be a ghost, or at the very least a medium channeling vibes from days of yore. This is not to say the Escondido-reared chanteuse is only slanging rehashed classics is the vein of Madeleine Peyroux, it’s just that there’s a decidedly old-timey, almost spooky, air to what she’s doing.

David Yow just missed being with his friend. The front-man for ’90s college radio darlings The Jesus Lizard makes it clear he had no burning desire to play the old tracks he and the rest of the band penned back in the days before the Internet. There was no internal call to get back on [...]

Ben Chasny the architect behind freak-folk outfit Six Organs of Admittance is as much a miner as he is a musician. Reared on a cheapie Tascam four-track recorder and plenty of time alone in his bedroom, the Bay Area based Chasny has a history of plundering through hours and hours of old tapes carefully scrapping [...]

NOFX’s 11th studio album, Coaster, delivers the same ironic (sardonic too) one-two fuck you songs that have made the West Coast punkers an institution. From tracks about creeping out lesbian singer Sara from Tegan and Sara to drinking anthems and left-leaning political numbers, the foursome – now in their 25th year – are doing what [...]

Tom Brosseau, the whip-thin North Dakota folkie who’s been issuing imagery-laden folk tales framed by a startling voice and an acoustic guitar for the better part of a decade, has changed things up. Yes, on his latest set, Posthumous Success, Brosseau has eschewed the simple and stripped down for a bit more punch and experimentalism. [...]

Aaron Harris’ demeanor is remarkably amiable considering his day job. As the drummer for psychedelic sludge lords Isis, conjured images of irrepressibility and moodiness seem ripe for the territory, but that’s just not the case. On the contrary, Harris is downright congenial. As he weighs in on the lengthy travels ahead of him in support [...]

Belinda Carlisle, she of Go-Go’s and hot chubby chick fame, is now the chanteuse she always thought she could be. Yeah, she’s achieved impressive commercial success as both a punk/new wave starlet and a bona fide pop star, but as a female rapidly approaching 50 she didn’t want to swim in the muddied waters of [...]

When athletes attain enough rings around the tree stump to be considered veterans their personal fate becomes much more malleable. Take basketball player Kevin Garnett. When the Minnesota Timberwolves, the team that drafted the seven-footer and groomed him for more than a decade, put him on the trading block last year Garnett had veto power [...]

When something new strikes enough of a nerve to actually leave a wake of hope and inspiration, pundits and laymen alike rush to crown it as “the next” in a line of greatness. LeBron James is “the next Michael Jordan,” Jack White is “the next Jimi Hendrix” and so on. While the [...]

Let’s be honest, Ra Ra Riot is a dumb name. It smacks of a long-forgotten inside joke that was never really that funny to begin with. It’s the kind of name that only appeals to its snarky initiators, as outsiders coolly practice articulating it (”RRR”) without coming off too obtuse. It’s the kind [...]