Frank Black is dead, but long live Black Francis as ‘Bluefinger’ brings back a little more Pixies-derived attitude.

There’s an easy target for this band: All the people who listened to any of the past few Porcupine Tree albums and just couldn’t get enough of Gavin Harrison’s drumming. You May Also Like: Chad Taylor – ‘Myths and Morals’ (2018)

by Tom Johnson Every genre seems to get reinvented every so often. Jazz had its renewal a few years back, and now the blues seems to be burbling under again, beginning into the early 2000s with the success of the White Stripes. But the White Stripes got nuthin’ on thisRead More

by Tom Johnson A definitive entry in the Talking Heads’ catalog this was somehow out of print at one point for, what, nearly two full decades? I was lucky enough to stumble upon a bootleg copy of the vinyl a while back but the sound quality was pretty rough; thereRead More

by Tom Johnson Three-part harmonies, a verified guitar-god genius, and some of the lowest, thickest, sludgiest bass around — King’s X is like the Beatles of metal, but they go year-after-year depressingly ignored. They scored a few minor hits in the early 1990s and then pretty much sunk off theRead More

by Tom Johnson The great Grant Lee Buffalo may have been long gone, but the heart was always just the voice and guitar of Phillips anyway, wasn’t it? In between takes as Gilmore Girls’ resident town troubador, Phillips found a few free moments to record this stripped down tribute toRead More

King Crimson mastermind Robert Fripp finally got around to re-issuing his first solo album in 2006, one that manages to cover pretty much all the bases he would ever touch upon — arty rock, post-punk, new wave, noise, it’s all there. And finally it’s there as Fripp originally planned itRead More

by Tom Johnson Paul McCartney has managed to document each of his more recent tours, yet insists on releasing them not as actual concert videos but more as documentaries of the show. This would be fine if he’d do as others have done, such as Peter Gabriel with Still GrowingRead More

by Tom Johnson I am convinced that Wainwright is this generation’s finest melodist. I can’t think of a single young artist who so beautifully crafts vocals in such a way that it simply doesn’t matter what he’s singing about: You just want to hear the melody he’s singing. And thereRead More

by Tom Johnson It’s hard not to wonder how bassist Gerard Smith’s fight with cancer during the recording of Nine Types of Light affected the group. After all, the end result is a decidedly different affair than past TV On The Radio efforts, sounding all the more mature and, admittedly,Read More