Quirky, catchy melodies have always been Pixies‘ calling card and on Beneath the Eyrie, their third post-reunion album, the alt-rock icons indulge everything from jaunty, old-timey Kurt Weill oom-pah rhythms to 10-foot waves of surf guitar. Frontman and chief songwriter Black Francis has said that the group embraced their most …
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At 18 songs in under an hour, Vampire Weekend‘s first album in six years sounds at first like a manic effort to make up lost time. Singer-guitarist Ezra Koenig, the band’s composer-lyricist and a co-producer on virtually every track, has stuffed his hooks and bridges with so many change-ups in …
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California’s High Desert is heavy with rock history. It’swhere country-rock icon Gram Parsons had his corpse cremated by friends; wherean Irish band found a name and cover image for a great LP; where Jim Morrison dropped acid andmade a movie. Now The Mekons — those zany, erudite and beloved British …
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Of all the Eighties bands that took hardcore punk as their launching pad, no one got further (or weirder) faster than guitar-twisting stoner gods the Meat Puppets. Even when the Arizona trio was recording for Black Flag’s record label and thrashing out one-minute songs at atomic speed, their music always …
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