NICK DERISO: A remarkably intuitive song, full of very adult emotion and haunting insight, from a band with such a frankly ridiculous name. “Summer Skin,” in fact, might just be all the more powerful for the lowered expectations that come from a group actually called Death Cab for Cutie. I don’t care if they were a staple on the soundtrack [...]

NICK DERISO: Four Dobie Gillis types, including brothers from Irvine, Calif., the Swamp Zombies were notable for having some amount of ability on all manner of instruments, but also at the clanging of pots and pans. They remain a great pop-music (or punk folk, I guess) example of what can go right when a band is willing to move out [...]

by Nick DeRiso Start with Husker Du’s “Everything Falls Apart,” a 1982 release that was a little more cohesive than the live debut. They chew UP Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman.” Eleven years later, “Everything Falls Apart” was released again on CD (and this is funny) with some extras as “Everything Falls Apart … and More.” More than — everything? Cool. (P.S.: [...]

NICK DERISO: A group with the sound and spirit of 1960s-era garage bands, the Woggles are best decribed by the things they are not — despite being from Athens, Ga. No Dead influences. No side projects with Peter Buck. “Teendanceparty” is, instead, refreshingly free of any jangly pretense. In fact, the Woggles’ muscular, long-playing debut was built on a rock-solid [...]

The now-defunct Dallas-area group Adam’s Farm was this nifty blending of popular music that still resonates with me, more than a decade after they split. Band motto: If they can’t take a joke, folk ‘em. Well, at first anyway. Adam’s Farm started out as a respectible set of earnest, well-meaning acoustics. Then they took a left turn in early January [...]

NICK DERISO: This adventurous pop Rhode Island trio made something of a critical splash two years earlier with “In the Presence of Greatness,” which Rolling Stone called “the year’s most addictive masterpiece.” So, here was the prescription for this, the follow up: – Ditch the former guy-of-the-moment, Matthew Sweet (a personal friend of the band, it was said then). Add [...]

NICK DERISO: “Wish” is a record I never came to grips with. On the one hand, it might have been called a return to form for the Cure, “like throwing arms ’round yesterday,” as Robert Smith sang here on “A Letter To Elise.” Back then, I took offense to such things. After all, the Cure had already made this record [...]

NICK DERISO: News that jangle-pop favorites the dBs (featuring on-again, off-again New Orleans resident Peter Holsapple) have gotten together to put down some new tracks brought me back to 1991′s “Mavericks,” a thoughtful record that would have sounded perfectly at home on an early 1980s college-rock station. Holsapple and Chris Stamey — who along with drummer Will Rigby and bassist [...]

Cowboy Mouth — announced this week as one of the many featured bands at the 2007 Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans — emerged in the early 1990s as a rugged, but distinctly popular rock alternative to the typical fiddle-and-rubboard fare associated with Louisiana music. Not that its New Orleans-based members weren’t capable of spare and emotionally direct work. [...]

by Nick DeRiso A pair of early 1990s Rhino compilations, all punky guts and art-rock pretention – without being pretentious – showed how the Do It Yourself aesthetic was given great depth by the almighty hook. Taken together, they’re a nice overview of the British punk explosion and the last days of the UK power-pop days. There’s some overlap, too [...]