St. Johnny

This determinedly indolent Connecticut combo incorporated the best and worst elements of post-Sonic Youth guitar rock into its fuzzy, feedback-encrusted worldview. The quartet’s undeniable cleverness and occasional virtuosity could prompt a pleasant buzz, but St. Johnny’s overwhelming lethargy too often prevented those rudimentary ideas/riffs from maturing into the kind of songs that last longer than…

Agitpop

During its existence, this Poughkeepsie, NY-spawned trio hacked up exceedingly dense hairballs of frat-boy-cum-trade-unionist fusion-punk. Heavily indebted to, if slightly to the right of (aesthetically) the Minutemen and Gang of Four, Agitpop operated on the age-old principle of “free your ass and your mind will follow.” The thing is, unlike the bulk of their boho…

Skin Yard

Stuck between rock and an art place, this Seattle contingent — led by guitarist Jack Endino, whose pivotal role as the Sub Pop scene’s leading producer has overshadowed his musical efforts — has borne the bridesmaid’s mantle for years as others have taken turns on the city’s Next Big Thing pedestal. It’s hard to see…

Tortoise

Punk set its sights on killing a lot of things — disco, arena-rock, singer-songwriter pabulum — but even the earliest anarcho-rumblers paid their respects to prog-rock icons as varied as Can (a fave of John Lydon) and the Red Krayola (a crucial influence on Pere Ubu, among others). Starting in the ’90s, a new generation…

Sonic Boom

From the general tone of his post-Spacemen 3 output, it’s clear that English guitarist, keyboardist and singer Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember was the reason that band spent so much of its performance career sitting down. Kember’s explorations of sonic possibilities have always been marked by nuances of shade and pitch rather than immediately recognizable “songs.”…

Marxman

Politics, like most perishables, doesn’t travel particularly well. By the time it crosses an ocean, practically all its flavor disappears, a difficulty that better agit-poppers ameliorate by simply, well, kicking out the jams. This strident UK-based Anglo-Irish-Caribbean hip-hop quartet, however, can muster neither the requisite energy nor the slightest innovation needed to get its arduously…

Prong

Whether they’re metal or not, this underground-spawned, speedcore-trained New York trio produced some of the most brutally assaultive power rock around. Formed by singer/guitarist Tommy Victor and his CBGB co-worker Mike Kirkland (bass/vocals) with drummer Ted Parsons of the Swans, Prong debuted with Primitive Origins, a record whose annoying reliance on change-on-a-dime tempos keeps the…

Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments

Most of the bands operating under the Luddite doctrine that’s been dubbed “lo-fi” are quiet…sweet-tempered…pussycats even. This Columbus-spawned quartet — the brainchild of former Great Plains frontman Ron House — makes like that same pussycat injected with a goodly dose of the rabies virus, tearing apart the shabby confines of its 4-track studio with glee.…

Bardo Pond

Perhaps as an equal-and-opposite reaction to the ubiquity of mosh-happy riff-merchants, a sort of head music revival got underway in the ’90s, focusing on sounds designed to exercise the brainpan more than the biceps. Like most of its ilk, this Philadelphia quintet defies the video era’s short-attention-span format with drawn-out, undulating jams that require the…

Chris Mars

Oddly enough, for a while, the most prolific artist to rise out of the ashes of Minneapolis’ self-destructive Replacements was drummer Chris Mars. The unfailing rhythmic glue that held the ‘Mats together through the wild digressions of its early days, Mars became so dissatisfied with Paul Westerberg’s intentions on 1990’s All Shook Down that his…

Flesh Eaters

Young poets on the East Coast were originally attracted to punk by its simplicity, directness and malleability. Most prominently, Patti Smith and Richard Hell found that crudely executed rock’n’roll provided the perfect backdrop for their verbal barrages. Though less celebrated, California’s Chris Desjardins made equally ambitious records with a constantly changing set of Flesh Eaters…

Helium

Part brainy guitar pop, part Dramamine evaluation tool, Boston’s Helium served as a vehicle for the fascinating lyrical perspective and detuned, lurching guitar expression of Mary Timony. Her playing, by far the band’s most distinctive feature, nibbles at the edges of post-My Bloody Valentine soundwall, but her string-bending and note refraction incorporate elements of guitar-dependent…

Rhys Chatham

For years, folks even marginally acquainted with NYC’s downtown music scene have been treated to an ongoing dialogue about which came first, the chicken or the egg. What’s unique about this particular debate is that the chicken and egg themselves — Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca — have been doing all the shouting about just…

D Generation

Not many people understand that it’s possible to draw a (relatively) straight line and connect the truly vital exponents of bad-boy rock’n’roll, regardless of spatial-temporal considerations-Presley, Richards and Thunders were all saying the same thing with each curled lip and thrust hip. That belief anchors D Generation’s every-admittedly calculated-move. If the New York quintet sounds…

Helmet

While contemporaries were mucking about in swamps of feedback and messy sludge-rock power chords, this New York quartet formulated a metal-bore sound so clean, crisp and martial that some wags adopted Teutonic accents when discussing “das precision rock sound.” Guitarist/singer Page Hamilton mastered the art of discipline as a foot soldier in Glenn Branca’s guitar…

Karl Hendricks Trio

Neurotic and noisy, this Pittsburgh trio pins Violent Femmes-styled coitus-pining to spiralling guitar sallies that are strongly reminiscent of Dinosaur Jr, a combination that allows singer/guitarist Karl Hendricks to divest himself of his surplus anxiety in half the time. Buick Elektra was recorded shortly after Hendricks split his old band, Sludgehammer — the name pretty…

Chrome

Under the innocuous name of Chrome, two San Franciscans — Damon Edge (vocals, synths, etc.) and Helios Creed (vocals, guitar, etc.), with part-time rhythm-section assistance by the Stench brothers of Pearl Harbor’s band — created an often awesome series of pre-industrial LPs that explore a dark state of mind only hinted at by ’60s psychedelia.…

Beastie Boys

Somewhere along the line, the Beastie Boys “progressed” from relentless beer-spewing assailants on good taste to self-appointed arbiters of a one-world youth culture wherein B-boys, skatepunks and art-nerds meet to share in stoopid fresh communion. Sometimes, as in the Beasties’ fluid miscegenation of vintage Afro-funk and the hardcore punk that is their more proximate roots,…

Rancid

Cynics may dismiss the Bay Area’s Rancid as “not the Clash, but an incredible simulation!” On the other hand, hyperbole-prone supporters might consider them the Stones to Green Day’s Beatles. (Which, if you were wondering, makes Offspring the new Herman’s Hermits.) The truth about Rancid lies somewhere in between. Yes, the quartet spends too much…

Tindersticks

England’s Tindersticks may not be the ideal band to invite to your next kegger, but it would be hard to imagine a finer convoy to guide you through those subdued moments of absinthe-accompanied repose. The Nottingham group makes a decidedly continental sound, polished chamber-pop settings punctuated by Gallic acoustic guitar flourishes and timeless port-city debauchery.…