Search Results for "Robert Levine"

Formed around 1990 and named after a suspected murderer mentioned on America’s Most Wanted, this Los Angeles quartet chronicles slacker life in its hometown with driving, edgy pop-rock that updates new wave bands like the Attractions, Yachts and Wall of Voodoo. The self-released Apartment Music cassette sets the tone for things to come, matching singer/songwriter/standup…

Mixing hip-hop and blues-rock might sound like a dicey concept, but New York one-man-band guitarist Bobby Sichran (a onetime Das EFX studio hand) combines them and traces of folk so seamlessly it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Best of all, Sichran’s music flows so naturally that his genre-blending never sounds…

This Vermont-to-Delaware power pop quartet packs exactly the sort of angst one would expect from a band named after the confused teen of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Singer/guitarist John Faye chronicles slacker life in a sleepy college town, addressing alienation and the perceived hypocrisy of the adult world in short, catchy modern pop…

In 1987, a bio-pic soundtrack cover of Ritchie Valens’ eternal Mexican-American party song elevated Los Lobos from solid popularity and lofty critical regard to a cultural institution with the potential of becoming a freeze-dried cliché. While putting the Southern California quintet on the fast track, “La Bamba” nearly drove them into a narrow and unwarranted…

Led by guitarist Mike Connell (his brother David is the bassist), this Raleigh, North Carolina quintet possesses a fragile, vaguely Celtic melodic sense that nicely complements the introspective lyrics, making for music that combines the best impulses of Southern guitar jangle and the sensitive singer/songwriter tradition. Darker Days broods a bit too intently, and suffers…

After Camper Van Beethoven broke up — the band’s members apparently divided over whether to focus on their experimental leanings or pure pop songcraft — singer/guitarist David Lowery formed Cracker with two high-school pals, guitarist Johnny Hickman and bassist Davey Faragher (the group has never had a permanent drummer), to do the latter. On Cracker,…

Just as devoted to swirling guitars as writing great pop songs, Velocity Girl — formed at the University of Maryland in the late ’80s (originally with future Unrest bassist Bridget Cross as its unrecorded singer) and named after a Primal Scream song — effectively mixed melodies into churning noise. Though the band occasionally came off…

This quartet from Wigan, England, was one of shoegazing’s most dynamic proponents — even if that quality manifested itself in terms of soaring musical sweep rather than onstage theatrics. Amid the swirling, psychedelic music, solid songwriting and frontman Richard Ashcroft’s hypnotic vocals helped the band’s better soundscapes actually go someplace. The five-song ’92 EP (compiling…

Ben Harper grew up in California’s Inland Empire, interested in the acoustic guitar and Dobro rather than the harder-edged sounds that influenced many of his contemporaries. Thus, on his debut, Harper expresses his anger with the world — and his desire for a better one — with a mellow mixture of blues and soul. The…

Artfully and delicately proceeding from Velvet Underground drone and folk-rock strum, California’s Mazzy Star makes music that can be either spellbinding or soporific. As a member of the Rain Parade, guitarist David Roback was a central figure in the “paisley underground,” a loose community of Los Angeles bands that gave psychedelia a post-punk revival in…

Sammy’s first longplayer sounds so much like Pavement that the resemblance hits like a yard of concrete. That’s not really such a bad thing, though; the duo of guitarist/bassist Luke Wood (a former member of Washington DC’s Soulside who didn’t join Girls Against Boys) and singer/guitarist/pianist Jesse Hartman shares that band’s musical adventurousness as well…

Like Pavement and the Archers of Loaf, this lo-fi indie-rock duo (relocated to Lawrence, Kansas from Visalia, California) proves that pop songs can be instantly infectious even if it’s hard to tell where they’ll go next. Butterglory’s songs are unpredictable, unpolished, off-kilter gems; they buzz with guitar feedback then drop back into catchy melodies with…