Interpol was a band I always stated was a staple of the "My First Indie Rock" song collection. It was the gateway to the more obscure and weird and experimental artists all along the blogosphere. However, the band hasn't been as synonymous with that as it used to be. Artists like Arctic Monkeys, Lana Del Rey, Twenty-One Pilots,…
I used to have a noise rock themed radio show in college. It all began when I picked up a copy of Whip It On, the debut EP from The Raveonettes, at a Princeton record store. It honestly blew my mind. The entire EP was written in Bb minor, and drenched in sweet, delicious fuzz.…
Good grief this band is hard to look up on the internet. Apparently a lot of things out there like to be number one. Obvious Highlander quote aside, I stumbled across this band and their self-titled debut LP through the typical Bandcamp digging and am happily content. The Number Ones is a Dublin band made…
Debut albums are tricky things to assess. An artist’s first full-length is not a reliable litmus test for how their career will pan out, or in some cases, their artistic validity. But it’s the unique blend of hype and mystery that always makes debuts exciting to listen to. That lack of history combined with the…
I was on Tumblr the other day when I saw this post called the "Anatomy of Music". It listed different genres and it gave the general (and very funny) structures of the songs that are associated with them. Indie music was comprised of banjo, twentysomething problems, faster banjo and it made me think of the…
If you've been following the genre since its inception, I'm sure that I don't have to tell you that pop punk hasn't always been the emotionally-charged melting pot that it is today. While classic pop punk bands such as Blink-182 may have occasionally ruminated on the nuances of growing up, they ended up spending most…
It's really hard for me to write about a Conor Oberst album because Bright Eyes is and will forever be one of my favorite bands of all time. When Oberst started to release solo albums again in 2008, I was a bit tepid. His self-titled album sounded like a lighter version of a Bright Eyes…
Radiator Hospital makes the kinds of records that your teenaged heart wishes it could have. Principle member Sam Cook-Parrott has meshed punk energy with pop songwriting since 2010 and has steadily stacked his discography with straight-up gems crafted with a great sense of earnestness, and yet all the modesty of a high school secret admirer.…
When I talked about while (1<2)'s first disc (see the review here) as being this perfectly paced venture into a non-traditional deadmau5 album, I meant it. Everything about the first disc brought new light into the way that house albums could be played, and if it was just kept at the first disc it would've been more…
Honeyblood's debut reminds me of Veronica Falls' Waiting for Something to Happen, some Icona Pop, Widowspeak, and a splash of The Breeders and Yuck. It's a mish-mash of sounds and ideas while still maintaining a really cool sound that should be praised but falls under the umbrella of most household names in indie pop. The sound is praise-worthy and the production…
