Nov. 21 is basically Punk Rock Day. There's the new Evens 7-inch, which is the first release from the duo of Ian MacKaye and Amy Farina in five years, and the new Office of Future Plans full-length, the debut of the J. Robbins-led quartet—both releases are out on Dischord Records. Also out that day is [...]
When the band was around between 1998 and 2003, Sterling, Va., post-hardcore group PG. 99 may have been easy to miss. The screamo band bathed its sound in a kind of dark, unrelentingly violent aura that doesn't have much in common with the pop-fueled punk sounds that dominated alt-rock airwaves in the early aughts. PG. [...]
“Hello, this is John Maus. Please listen to my new album on Spotify.” Direct and chipper, the in-house advertisement was nevertheless an ominous thing to hear between songs this week, a few days after the Minnesota electro-pop singer created an indie-rock controversy by telling Pitchfork he’s glad so many record stores “have little ‘closed’ signs on [...]
Alex Baca leads off this week's arts section with her reflection on the state of University of Maryland student-run station WMUC—which she says ought to declare independence. Joe Warminsky reviews three strong albums from local labels: New Des Ark and Pygmy Lush LPs from Lovitt, and the latest Joe Lally record from Dischord. Chris Klimek [...]
It's about to be showcase season—only 1,500 miles away, at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas. We're not totally out of luck here, though. Windian Records has an all-day showcase at U Street Music Hall Saturday (more on that later this week) titled "Fuck SXSW." Like the Windian kids, Arlington's Lovitt Records seems [...]
HO HO WHO: Des Ark has been plugging away at rock songs and folk songs for years, once via Richmond and now via Philadelphia. The band has been a trio, a duo, and–as in this case–a solo affair. Though it's had relatively few official releases, Des Ark has been involved with local labels from Exotic [...]
You thought they were dead. It was only a ruse: The great D.C. spazzcore outfit Frodus tracked two new songs and remade an older one during its too-brief 2009 reunion stint, and just last week, Lovitt Records released the results, the Soundlab 1 7-inch. You won't find the songs on iTunes—the tracks are available digitally [...]
The Mercury Program's vibes-laden, melodic prog has been a valuable asset to the instrumental rock scene since the late '90s, but it's been an awful long time since the group kicked out its dreamy jams in D.C. The band has been on hiatus for several years due to all the usual grownup reasons, but it's [...]
Most bands break up for pretty silly reasons—money issues, personality conflicts, longstanding arguments about whether or not to play free-jazz.
North Carolina trio Fin Fang Foom, on the other hand, has encountered some very real and serious obstacles. The band's original drummer, Peter Enriquez, passed away in an automobile accident. In 2004 guitarist Michael Triplett spent [...]
It's not that Denali broke up because it ran out of ideas. No, the Richmond, Virginia quartet had plenty of those–enough to fuel several band's worth of melancholy indie-rock. Having enough time for those projects, on the other hand, was a problem. Founding members Keeley Davis and Jonathan Fuller departed from the band in '03 [...]
