Hannah Levin

The New Pornographers’ frontman Carl Newman has a lingering bone to pick with the ’90s cocktail culture revivalists. “It always sort of annoyed me during the lounge craze that people would get into

For better or for worse, music journalists are perpetually fascinated with the links between

Mötley Crüe Sun July 31 Clark County Amphitheater Mötley Crüe corrupted me in precisely the manner every parent feared–and in just the way every member of the band must have hoped for. The summer that Too Fast for Love hit the streets, I ditched my dorky glasses for contacts, started bleaching my hair, bought what […]

Love as Laughter Thur June 23 Berbati’s Pan 10 SW 3rd When Sub Pop first floated me an advance copy of Love as Laughter’s latest, Laughter’s Fifth, I took a frustrating rollercoaster ride of elation and disappointment. The record was a long-overdue, gracefully executed treasure highlighting frontman Sam Jayne’s exceptional knack for fusing crafty lyrical […]

The Hold Steady Fri June 10 Berbati’s Pan 10 SW 3rd I harbor an unproven theory that high-quality, industry-shaking rock music rotates on a 14-year cycle. Based on the historical reference points of 1977 (when the Sex Pistols unleashed Never Mind the Bollocks… ) and 1991 (when Nirvana induced a chart-quake with Nevermind), this is […]

Southern rock conjures up a stock set of sounds and thematic imagery for even the most open-minded music fan. The tragic, stubborn swagger of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the perpetually revered majesty of the Allman Brothers are at the top of the list, followed closely by boogie rock stalwarts ZZ Top and trailed by the less […]

Arriving at the 10-year mark as a band–particularly for a rock band–is more than a historical touchstone. It’s quite often the point where artists either shed their skin and enter an entirely new phase of inventiveness or plateau and begin their inevitable descent into obscurity or irrelevance. After nearly a decade together, the Rolling Stones […]

My first experience with music snobbery was in fourth grade, circa 1980. I made the grave mistake of bringing my meticulously maintained Olivia Newton-John record collection to class for show-and-tell. As I lovingly flipped through each record cover, noting the Billboard position of the various corresponding hit singles and the artistic trajectory of Miss Newton-John’s […]

Dolly Parton Fri Dec 17 Rose Garden 1401 N Wheeler At a recent wedding reception I attended, friends of the newly married couple performed a hipster and grandma friendly soundtrack, providing an assortment of appropriate covers, including those of Nick Cave, Mazzy Star, and Dolly Parton songs. And just as the frontman began singing the […]