Search Results for "Deborah Sprague"

The members of this New York quartet grew up on the stridently philosophical side of the tracks of the mid-’80s punk scene in Gotham, having cut their teeth in zealous combos like Youth of Today, Gorilla Biscuits and Absolution. By the time Quicksand formed in 1989, they’d outgrown the one-dimensional sonic attack of that era,…

In its prime, Atlanta’s Opal Foxx Quartet threatened to serve as a one-band cure for terminal jadedness. After all, who could muster an “I’ve seen it all before” yawn when confronted with a ten-piece beatnik-jazz-cum-performance-art troupe fronted by a rail-thin drag queen who sang about anorexia and happened to be a vocal doppelgänger for Tom…

It’s not altogether surprising that this Chicago-based guitar army would find a nesting spot under the wing of Smashing Pumpkins — the bands are related not only by marriage (Catherine drummer Kerry Brown to Pumpkins bassist D’Arcy Wretzky) but by a deep-seated disposition towards the big bold sounds of ’70s prog-rock. (The quintet’s slogan is…

Saccharine Trust guitarist Baiza’s first solo record contains two endless studio jams, sans vocals. “Certain Way” covers the entire first side and part of the second; whether you’ll actually turn the record over to hear how it finishes depends entirely on your ability to remain awake during nineteen enervating minutes of four guys dicking around…

Calling the Honeymoon Killers’ debut disc a bad album is about as informative as calling Catch a Fire a reggae record: it’s just a generic description. This New York four-piece (not to be confused with the Belgian band named after the same 1970 psychotronic cinema classic) is firmly rooted in the aesthetics of the splatter…

By the time a pair of ne’er-do-well Hoosier punks rechristened themselves Axl and Izzy and headed west to the promised land, the core of Vincennes, Indiana’s Lazy Cowgirls had already blazed that trail, absorbing many of the same substances (both aurally and otherwise) while retaining the ingrained grittiness and knee-jerk bad attitude that marks ’em…

Iggy Pop has always insisted that the Stooges were really a free-jazz band in rock drag. If you accept that, then you’ll likely find Sweden’s Union Carbide Productions to be the best — or at least the most authentic — band mining the Dee-troit vein of sonic scrunge. The first album’s top tracks (“Financial Declaration,”…

On his compulsive own, Eugene Chadbourne (previously the guitarist and leader of Shockabilly) has spewed forth a ceaseless stream of records and cassettes (the latter on his own Parachute label) that easily represent the oddest version of country and folk music ever. While the notable left-winger’s guitar playing is looser than clams, it harbors wildly…

There must be something about the landscape around Bristol, England, that incites its denizens to travel ever deeper inward in order to find inspiration for their art. Not at all dissimilar to the contemporaneous trip-hop scene that flourishes at its doorstep, Flying Saucer Attack creates a trance-like, decidedly cerebral sound — albeit without the vaguest…

Falling James (Moreland) is one of the rock underground’s most fascinating denizens — and not solely because he married Courtney Love and lived to tell the tale. He’s a gifted high-octane songwriter who often obscures his best songs under cloaks of obscenity and shoddy recording, an incisive political thinker with an equally strong bent for…

Like the Loch Ness monster, this venerable New York quartet creates both heated excitement and intense apprehension among those who’ve followed its murky existence through more than two decades of irregular surfacings. Chain Gang began with the onset of New York’s first punk scene, having played its initial gigs (under a prior name) in the…

Bad taste — and attitude — is timeless. That’s a tacit understanding in the ranks of this Columbus, Ohio quartet, which was weaned on the nectar of late-model Midwest punk before moving on to solid sustenance like Johnny Thunders bootlegs, garage-rock obscurities and Deliverance-primitive rockabilly tumult. Like all of its influences, the New Bomb Turks…

Although this now-defunct Olympia, Washington outfit — along with fellow travelers Beat Happening — introduced the term “love-rock” into the underground lexicon, Some Velvet Sidewalk wasn’t all sweetness and light. Sure, frontman Al Larsen’s unrelenting artlessness — evident in both his purposefully detuned, primitive playing and Jonathan Richmanesque tales of ice cream, dinosaurs and the…

In theory, few musical propositions are less savory than lily-white wanna-beats “branching out” to flex a few alterna-rap muscles, but in practice, it can work out — provided the musicians involved carefully circumvent minstrelsy. This New York foursome recognizes that none of its personnel is from the ‘hood, even as it asserts its right to…

The mercurial Cheepskates began life as an anomaly on New York’s garage-rock scene: when most of their peers were scouring exurbia for vintage paisleys and vinyl (the more primitive the better, on both counts), this low-key quartet was creating some of the most carefully crafted pure pop to escape from those Seed-y halls. Run Better…

Few manufactured hypes have ever backfired on a scale as massive as the one that blew up in the face of this Chicago- to-Los-Angeles circus-metal act and the label that shelled out what was mooted to be a record-setting advance in order to sign it. Exploitive on levels even Malcolm McLaren would never have dreamed…

Having spent his teens and early twenties as timekeeper/noisemaker with pioneering English homebrew primitivists the Swell Maps, this Birmingham native (who relocated to London) could probably have released tapes of his kitchen putterings and earned avant-garde kudos. When he decided to make his solo bow — after interim stints in the Jacobites (led by his…

A buswoman’s holiday for noise-rock scenesters — most prominently Sonic Youth bassist/singer Kim Gordon (playing guitar) and ex-Pussy Galore guitarist/singer Julia Cafritz — Free Kitten (originally just Kitten) gussies up its thinly sliced wryness with ephemeral R&B and hip-hop flourishes, neither of which lend the vaguest degree of soulfulness to the proceedings. That studied coolness…

If, as John Lydon once wailed, anger is an energy, Trent Reznor could power a pretty good-sized city all by himself. The Pennsylvania farmboy turned Cleveland industrial auteur virtually perfected the tantrum-rock genus, spewing lyrical vitriol at an astounding array of targets (not the least of which being himself) and obsessively sequestering himself away, Macintosh…