Cloudspeakers

The story of Klaxons’ Surfing the Void eclipsed the music 18 months ago, when Jamie Reynolds acknowledged that the band members had returned to the studio to record new songs after their label, Pol... Read more

It takes all of three songs of Personal Life to know that these are not the same Thermals who made The Body, The Blood, The Machine (possibly the best punk album of the ‘00s) and Now We Can See. Th... Read more

The turmoil the members of Ra Ra Riot had to go through just to put out their debut album -- the death of founding member John Pike, deciding whether to continue without him, trying to top a belove... Read more

The great irony of Freddie Gibbs’ widening underground fame is that 15 years ago, he would have been looked at as just another regional response to the gritty street journalism of Tupac, Nas, Jay-Z... Read more

Les Savy Fav’s pseudo-comeback in 2007 via Let’s Stay Friends was one of the more fortunate of the last decade. Les Savy Fav were always ahead of the curve, doing danceable punk years before the Ra... Read more

No description of Menomena’s distinct clamor, even the good ones, feels like it completely captures the band. You could describe the Portland three-piece as experimental rock (they did make their o... Read more

“Sometimes I can’t believe it/ I’m moving past the feeling,” Win Butler sings a few moments into the winsome title track to Arcade Fire’s excellent third album, The Suburbs. We know that this guy i... Read more

When they are firing on all cylinders, on top of their game, at the top of their peak, School of Seven Bells sound like a fantastic Hewlett-Packard commercial. And I don’t mean that in the pejorati... Read more

The most common charge levied against Wolf Parade’s solid second album, At Mount Zoomer, was that the band was stretching itself thin, and maybe, just maybe, co-frontmen Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckn... Read more

At the same time they became the biggest band in hip-hop -- at least among hippie festivalgoers, who were allowed to feel like they were celebrating diversity by listening to the Roots, and accordi... Read more