The National Trouble Will Find Me (4AD) Rating: 4 stars The National slowly made their ascension to the indie rock elite through their first four albums, until the recognition for 2010’s High Violet finally caught up with the high quality of music the band had been releasing for years. As such, the follow-up is on [...]

Looking at old photographs is usually a happy occasion, reminding people of great memories and good times. Context is everything, however, and photos can sting if the person in the picture and the person viewing the picture are no longer part of each other’s big picture. That’s the set-up for The Cure’s “Pictures Of You,” [...]

Vampire Weekend Modern Vampires Of The City (XL Recordings) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars The third album is the one where a band is supposed to make its big jump, but Vampire Weekend got a bit ahead of themselves. After the buzz-band hyperbole of their self-titled 2008 debut album, they came back two years [...]

Patty Griffin American Kid (New West) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Stream the album Patty Griffin is one of those artists who is practically incapable of putting out a disappointing album. Such artists often get taken for granted, but Griffin’s spark and spirit is such that her music demands attention and appreciation every time [...]

Syd Barrett was really only an active participant on one Pink Floyd album, their enchanting 1967 debut The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, before drug abuse exacerbated pre-existing mental problems and forced the band to fire him. Yet his influence and inspiration on the four members of the group lasted well into the next [...]

She & Him Volume 3 (Merge) Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars Stream the album She may be the New Girl on television, but Zooey Deschanel is getting to be an old pro at this music thing. Any complaints about a Hollywood starlet interloping on indie rock’s heralded ground have long since died away, or [...]

This List appears in our May/June 2013 issue. Subscribe here. Townes Van Zandt recorded just nine studio albums from his debut album in 1968 until his death in 1997, but those albums are so jam-packed with impeccable songs that it makes choosing just 20 of them a nearly impossible task. Nonetheless, it’s the perfect way [...]

This article appears in our upcoming May/June “country” issue. Subscribe here. (Written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman) There’s an old cliché that says country music is mostly comprised of three chords and the truth. There’s also a generalization that says country music is, on the whole, unremittingly sad. Needless to say, those are broad descriptions [...]

It’s sort of an answer record to an answer record. Or maybe it’s the last act in a trilogy. Whatever you want to call it, “Ronnie And Neil” by Drive-By Truckers is part of a continuum of rock songs that deal with the rich, complicated history of the American South and the way that history [...]

Unless you’ve been living in a Twitter-proof bunker for the past week, you’re probably aware of a certain cringeworthy country-rap collaboration that has mortified the music world. The less said about that mess, the better, but rest assured that there is a way for a songwriter to describe a complex heritage with honesty, pride, and [...]

Yeah Yeah Yeahs Mosquito Interscope Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars Is it possible that it’s been ten years since Yeah Yeah Yeahs broke onto the scene with debut album Fever To Tell and the striking single “Maps?” Maybe it doesn’t seem so long because the New York trio takes its sweet time between albums; [...]

They had a name that sounded like the house band for a Muzak company, and they released albums with drawings of ornate spaceships on the covers. It was a recipe for a debacle, but Electric Light Orchestra also had a genius at the helm in Jeff Lynne, who peppered the airwaves in the late 70’s [...]