Search Results for "Brad Reno"

Punk rock and hip-hop (if not John “Working Class Hero” Lennon) brought four-letter words into the music mainstream, but it was Liz Phair who reclaimed “fuck” as active verb for the undersexed indie-rock generation. Arriving in the cute and coy wake of Juliana Hatfield, the soft-willed infantilists and a million wimpy boy bands fearful of…

At the outset of his career, Jonathan Richman was considered a radical trailblazer, precociously exploring minimalist rock years before such behavior became popular (or even acceptable). Not only was his unique approach enormously influential on later bands, original members of the Modern Lovers went on to become successful in such groups as Talking Heads (Jerry…

The son of gifted singer-songwriters Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III, Rufus Wainwright (who, as an infant, inspired his father to write and sing “Rufus Is a Tit Man”) inherited his parents’ eye for telling details and wry sense of humor, but the theatrical flair is all his own. His artfully constructed songs owe more…

Originally lost in the gap between glam-rock and punk, Ultravox (initially operating, from 1974 to ’76, as Tiger Lily) became prime movers of the electro-pop and new romantic movements when they combined synthesizer with the direct and danceable pop music of the new wave. Produced by Brian Eno, Steve Lillywhite and the group, Ultravox! marries…

Formed in 1978, Polyrock was one of the first New York groups to explore post-disco/new-sensibility dance music. The sextet led by ex-Model Citizens singer/guitarist Billy Robertson gained unquestionable artistic credibility through the patronage of Philip Glass, who (with his producer, Kurt Munkacsi) produced and played on their two original albums. Polyrock combines minimalist repetition (the…

Like their pesky namesakes, the Bunnymen just can’t stop breeding. While Joy Division and Gang of Four are the icons most often namechecked by 21st century post-punk revivalists, it’s the (unfairly) less critically revered McCulloch and Co. who are the most echoed. Supposed Joy Division clones Interpol really sound very little like Unknown Pleasures but…

In the early 1980s, Frank Black had a drunken one-night stand with the Divinyls’ Christina Amphlett who, nine months later, gave birth to Chantel Claret. Okay, that didn’t actually happen, but judging from the sound of Claret’s band, Morningwood, it might as well have. On their self-titled debut, the rudely named New York quartet —…

Least likely to what? Sleep in pajamas without feet? Go to bed without his cocoa? Be able to beat up Stuart Murdoch? Jof, the lyricist and singer for The Boy Least Likely To, a UK band not quite tough enough to be considered twee, is seriously wimpy — one can easily picture him fainting at…

Despite nearly everything said about them in the press, Brooklyn’s Clap Your Hands Say Yeah sound very little like Talking Heads. Vocalist Alec Ounsworth does possess a yelp in the vicinity of David Byrne’s, but that’s where any resemblance ends. (And Ounsworth sounds more like Tom Verlaine than Byrne half the time anyway.) Musically, the…

Formed in Hershey, Pennsylvania by high school friends who shared a fondness for new wave and post-punk, the Ocean Blue fused their influences — the Smiths, the Teardrop Explodes, R.E.M. — into a likable debut. The college radio hit “Between Something and Nothing” (which smacks of “Lips Like Sugar”-era Echo and the Bunnymen) sets the…

Just as Stereolab’s melding of American and French space-age pop styles with krautrock in large part ignited the lounge music resurgence of the 1990s in the Anglo-American music scene, it also rekindled an interest amongst Gallic youth in their own retro-pop. Backward-looking young musicians, from electronic craftsmen Air to singer-songwriters Keren Ann and Benjamin Biolay,…

Moving from electronic tape experiments to highly polished synthesizer pop and beyond, Liverpudlians Andy McCluskey (bass/vocals/keyboards) and synthesist Paul Humphreys (with other fulltime members, including — very significantly — a corporeal acoustic drummer) were among the most successful practitioners of electro-pop, as first demonstrated by a delightful string of singles. They proved early on that…

Girl groups have always been more subversive than they appear, from the Phil Spector-produced efforts of the early ’60s boosting African-American teens from housing projects into Top 40 radio to the double-agents in Bananarama bringing post-punk flavor to the masses while forcing new wavers to confront mainstream pop. Brighton, England’s Pipettes, who are associates of…

Luke Steele, the mastermind of Perth, Australia’s the Sleepy Jackson, has a serious George Harrison jones. The quiet Beatle’s influence, which colors much of his band’s work, is not a bad thing at all. Lovers abounds in Harrisonesque guitar and melodic country-tinged pop, with dashes of Robyn Hitchcock, the Flaming Lips and Perth legends the…

Michigan’s Original Brothers and Sisters of Love’s anachronistic blend of modern sensibilities with such traditional forms of music as heroic ballads and sea chanteys predated the similar Decemberists by a few years, but the Brothers and Sisters never approached the Portland band’s level of popularity. If the Decemberists’ Colin Meloy sometimes comes across as a…

The Stockholm duo Ak-Momo creates music that soothes the soul even as it troubles the mind. Mattias Olsson uses antique electronic instruments such as the optigan, orchestron and mellotron to craft gorgeously melodic but vaguely disturbing backing for Ak von Malmborg’s pixieish vocals, which suggest Joanna Newsom and (by extension) the young teenage Kate Bush,…

Self-billed as “The Emotional Wench,” Indiana native Lisa Germano first surfaced as the fiddler with John Cougar Mellencamp’s band, but her own work is light years away from the heartland swagger of her erstwhile employer. The self-released On the Way Down From the Moon Palace showcases country-tinged folk-pop with mandolin and accordion augmenting guitars and…

Blend the B-52’s with the Fleshtones and multiply the resulting lunacy by a factor of ten and you’ll come up with something close to the Cosmopolitans, a short-lived, little-remembered combo which flashed through the New York City club scene at the dawn of the ’80s. Formed at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill…

After years of session work and part-time employment with Lene Lovich, Bruce Woolley & the Camera Club, Thompson Twins, Foreigner and Joan Armatrading, Thomas Dolby helped revitalize a largely moribund and redundant synth-pop scene with his own recordings. The Golden Age of Wireless avoids the usual tactical error and gives the songs prominence over the…