Is it VU? Is it TV? Is it Superband? Nope, it’s just the Strokes, for whom outsized — and musically misinformed — hype made media darlings of five rich kids arrogantly posing as bored young rock stars (naming your debut Is This It says it all, doesn’t it?) and then turned them into actual rock…
Emerging from suburban Sheffield on a frenzied wave of hype, the Arctic Monkeys neatly filled the void left by the Libertines as avatars of UK retro-punk. Fronted by Alex Turner, an elfin cross between Paul Weller and Jarvis Cocker with a forceful, expressive voice, the band made a conspicuous splash on the scene when the…
If the 21st century has revealed a character of any sort so far, it would have to be utter shamelessness, a devil-take-me willingness to do the most unthinkable thing without a shred of concern. Following that path, London’s Libertines begin their first album with “Vertigo” and “Death on the Stairs,” delicious jaunts that clone the…
For a time the world’s best rock’n’roll band — proof that those who missed the ’60s could still build something great on the crass and hollow corpse of ’70s music — Minneapolis’ Replacements began as juvenile punks whose give-a-shit attitude masked the seeds of singer/guitarist/songwriter Paul Westerberg’s self-destructive genius for injecting sensitivity into flat-out chaos.…
Had he not been the most important and compelling American punk-rock voice of the 1980s, a rebellious font of trenchant, self-abusing irony, Paul Westerberg might be thoroughly admired (or at least forgiven) for his solo career. Attempting to reconcile himself with such unforeseen personal developments as sobriety, independence and adulthood, the chortling author of the…
