Search Results for "Ian McCaleb"

Led by singer/lyricist Guy Picciotto, Washington DC’s Rites of Spring — which broke up in ’87, leaving him to help found Fugazi — was an extraordinary punk band. Part of a dubious emo-core (emotionally charged hardcore) mini-movement, the quartet enveloped articulate sentiments in a relentless rush of rhythm and melody that was simultaneously pulverizing and…

Leicester, England’s prolific Cornershop launched its career with the buzzy In the Days of Ford Cortina, a four-song EP, at the beginning of 1993 and hasn’t bothered to look back. (Or, judging by the deluge of singles and EPs the group released that same year, for the studio exit door, either.) Led by brothers Tjinder…

Longtime cult darlings well on their way to becoming one of Australian rock’s most enduring legends, Sydney’s Radio Birdman sprang from a primordial stew comprised of the Doors, Stooges, MC5 and Blue öyster Cult. The sextet’s 7-inch Burn My Eye melded bits from each of those bands and, in so doing, became a durable archetype…

To those who didn’t bother to keep track of every bit of minutiae flowing from the Seattle rock scene in the early ’90s, Coffin Break was likely just another face in a long line of indistinguishable faces. Why the band never reached any measure of national prominence is a no-brainer — the trio clung to…

Although probably better known for his stints in Washington DC’s Dag Nasty and California’s All, Dave Smalley began his career in Boston, with a hardcore band ironically named for the city’s Department of Youth Services. On Wolfpack, as DYS expounds the judgmentally self-righteous straight-edge ethos (no drugs, no drink) that became popular in both Boston…

Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s Snatches of Pink played a tasty blend of Stones raunch and punk insistence, well- crafted tunes delivered with jackhammer finesse on its debut, Send in the Clowns. Singer Andy McMillan is a young good-ol’-boy with an aching twang stuck in his throat, spurred to spill his guts by Michael Rank’s barbed…

The six long songs on the self-released Turmoil in the Toybox find this Austin quartet toiling through the same bleary guitar-slog as retro bashers like Thee Hypnotics, only with no sense of style or evident enthusiasm for the form beyond its option of velvet-trousered indulgence, as well as a weak but obvious U2 imitation (“Star-Crossed…

The product of a city with a tremendous underground musical heritage, this Boston trio plays a hybrid of common punk and ’70s heavy-guitar rock, but writes surprisingly sensitive songs with memorable hooks and singalong choruses. On Rock Starve, the Bags demonstrate a singular ability to analyze and describe relationships and emotions with searing but subtle…

Had Raleigh, North Carolina’s Finger managed to break free of the anonymity it endured throughout a three-year career, the quartet would undoubtedly have stood tall in the sea of dreck. Finger (the American album reprises five cuts from the British seven-songer) is worth searching for, worth owning and doubly worth preserving. Led by singer/guitarist Brad…