boston — peace of mind: what is so perversely appealing about this? summer and joy pervade the helium harmonies, the meticulously-crafted and sports-car-sleek just-enough tough-pop guitar riffs, and the snappily driving beat. nearly as blues[…]

What better way to celebrate the end of my alphabetical toils than with a good bit of PORN. (Josh, you wanted filthy links on NYLPM: here they are.)
OK, this is really the new Add N To X video, “Plug Me In”, for which the analogue Camden […]

Z is for….”Zoom” by Fat Larry’s Band. Why write about bad music? Because every song, dreadful or sublime, means something to someone somewhere, and in a sense it’s the critic’s job to find out why. Usually that som[…]

“Kid A” will debut at #1 on this week’s Billboard chart. 209,000 copies of the album were sold in the States in its first 7 days of release.[…]

Y is for….”You Wear It Well” by Rod Stewart. Half a phone call, a golden riff, and a masterclass in how to talk a girl round. It’s the delicious balance between Rod’s abjection and his geezer cheek that wins it, the know[…]

I like Jonathan Romney: he’s pretty much my model of what an intelligent, engaging arts journalist should be. And here he is talking about Kid A. I’d basically agree with what he says about the response to the album, with the proviso that[…]