Like many great art punks before them, Parquet Courts have a latent guitar-jam gene — one reason this revisitation of songs from 2014’s Sunbathing Animal isn’t superfluous. Another is raw power. Check the rave-up in “Bodies,” three minutes of six-string pleasure bombs made sweatier, sparkier, gutsier. Even better is the set-capping… Source: RollingStone Link: Live at […]

As Bob Marley took reggae to the world in the Seventies, singer-producer Vivian Jackson, a.k.a. Yabby You, was filling the wake in Jamaica with righteous and sensual singles — the sublime debut, “Conquering Lion,” the poised confrontations “Jah Vengeance” and “Run Come Rally” — that fused dread sermons and R&B-vocal class. On… Source: RollingStone Link: Dread Prophecy

Elliott Smith’s all-too-brief career inspired a generation of artists taken by his piercing lyrics and delicate melodies. On this loving, hit-or-miss tribute, Seth Avett and Jessica Lea Mayfield draw largely from Smith’s 1997 breakthrough, Either/Or, and his posthumous work. Mayfield provides the highlights with her grunge rendition of “Roman Candle”… Source: RollingStone Link: Seth Avett […]

Welcome to alternative rock’s Chinese Democracy. Modest Mouse’s sixth studio album is the Washington state band’s first full-length work of new songs since 2007; it may also be the longest hour of music you hear this year. Singer-songwriter Isaac Brock and drummer Jeremiah Green, aided by a cast of dozens,… Source: RollingStone Link: Strangers to […]

Paul McCartney, Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman — comparisons are inescapable for this 29-year-old singer-songwriter. But accusing Tobias Jesso Jr. of piano-rock plagiarism is like accusing Shake Shack of hamburger mimicry. His debut LP gathers 12 beautifully lean ballads sung in a vulnerable tenor, with vintage studio touches blended by sharp producers… Source: RollingStone Link: Goon

Singer-songwriter Ron Nagle was proudly out of step in acid-rock San Francisco: leading the Who-ish pop-art band the Mystery Trend, then issuing this sweet-and-salty 1970 meal of prescient roots rock and slippery romanticism. This two-CD reissue has demos that show how Nagle got to his lost-classic blend of proto-Rockpile brawls… Source: RollingStone Link: Bad Rice […]

L.A.’s Awolnation broke out with their 2011 hit “Sail,” a dark and stormy electro-rock power ballad on which singer Aaron Bruno succeeded in sliding the phrase “blame it on my ADD” into the pop consciousness. His ADD is still cooking on the band’s latest album: Bruno is a studio impressionist… Source: RollingStone Link: Run

With bands like the War on Drugs refracting Dire Straits’ honeyed 1980s guitar sound, it’s surprising that Mark Knopfler hasn’t rebooted his old band lately. Instead, he’s been unpacking his influences on modest, multifaceted rock LPs like this one. Opening on a vamp recalling Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five,” then veering… Source: RollingStone Link: Tracker

“Even if we wanted/You can’t turn back the hands of time,” Kelly Clarkson sings over the synth strut of the aptly titled “Nostalgic.” But the OG American Idol manages to pull off that clock reversal, flooring her DeLorean back to the Eighties on her seventh studio album. She gets her… Source: RollingStone Link: Piece by […]

You cannot accuse Noel Gallagher, the former singer-guitarist and domineering songwriter in Oasis, of lacking self-awareness. The title of his second album since that British band’s implosion in 2009 gets right to Gallagher’s stubbornly retrospective passions — anything by the Beatles; Seventies glam; the Eighties boom in paisley jangle, led in… Source: RollingStone Link: Chasing Yesterday