Julianne Shepherd

IT’S RARE that I say, “This band should be on mainstream pop radio” and mean it as a compliment. Amid all the music that comes off the assembly line of the choking, corporate-driven airwaves, there are, of course, few bands that can impress both your average mainstream listener, and your average indie rock musician. The […]

BEFORE YOU LISTEN to Duracraft, the new four-song EP by The Prids, you should turn up your stereo as loud as it can possibly go without breaking champagne glasses. That’s because this album deserves to become the landscape of the room, the car, or wherever you are listening. Its sound rises up from the floorboards […]

IN THE WORLD of rock music, hardly anything mainstream actually rocks anymore, in the truest sense of the word. I mean, examine the contents of the most recent Rolling Stone magazine: The Backstreet Boys. U2. ‘N Sync. Granted, RS has become more of a bible of nostalgia than a voice of the railing youth, but […]

Steve Kramp is a folky singer-songwriter whose acoustic guitar-picking ranges from moonlit and delicate to railing and aggressive. His passionate tenor voice contains a beautifully oily, natural vibrato that can melt anyone’s heart. Steve Kramp is also charming, warm, and cordial. You can hear it in his music. He is so cordial, in fact, that […]

IN THE EARLY ’90S, while an entire generation of Beat Happening fanatics were making the simplest music possible, Polvo was dirtying things up. Employing a distinctly low-key sound (every track sounded as if a layer of fuzz was applied), yet playing mysteriously jagged, minor-key discordance that smacked of good musicianship, Polvo eschewed the fresh-off-the-street sound […]

I WAS HALF-DRUNK at the Luna Lounge in NYC; long unwashed, the rank cigarette stench on my clothes was only outdone by seven full days of city grit caked on my hands and face. It was CMJ, and I’d been waiting in line for the bathroom for like a fucking hour, and as I was […]