Spotlight on a Lotus band
I was able to catch up with Antti Järvelä  of the Finnish string band Frigg.  The band is no stranger to Lotus Festival, but according to Antti, they’re still excited about their 2008 performance.  Throughout the interview, Antti kept me laughing but still had some very interesting outlooks on music and [...]

At first listen, the newest release from Bloomington band, Gentleman Caller, didn’t do anything for me. Not one of the fourteen tracks on “Vs. The Elephant” stuck out from the rest. The entire forty-five minutes of the album sailed by unremarkably.
It wasn’t until the fourth or fifth run through when musical hooks or catchy one-liners [...]

Maryland five-piece cult-rock band Clutch marks its seventeenth year with a live album.  Largely unknown to the world except to “Gearheads,” Clutch’s style ranges from the pantheon of classic rock and blues to metal and punk.  One might imagine Blues Traveler meets early System of a Down.  The result is a hard rock jam band [...]

One day in April a couple of years ago, concert rag POLLSTAR asked Amanda Palmer, female half of the Dresden Dolls, what the phrase “Brechtian Punk Cabaret” meant, exactly.
‘I just wrote that on our first press release because I didn’t want the press to have to come up with a name for us.  I was [...]

“Saudades de Rock” is a very hit-and-miss album. Cherone’s voice is good, as is Bettencourt’s guitar playing, but many of the songs seem to miss their marks at times. The band definitely has variety, mixing hard rock/blues, funk and soft rock.

If it seems like “Daylight Kissing Night” is disjointed and has no apparent theme, you’d be right, because it’s actually supposed to be a greatest hits compilation rather than a real album.  A big picture of Marsland on the front, depicts him wearing a t-shirt that says “Adam Marsland’s greatest hits,” but I actually thought [...]

Do a quick Google search for the sixth album from The Dandy Warhols, Earth To The Dandy Warhols, and you may read some pretty unfavorable reviews from the likes of Pitchfork, Q Magazine and Rolling Stone. They called it too long, and at over 70 minutes, who can blame them? They said it was too [...]

Chicago trio Catfish Haven is an independent band on Secretly Canadian Records. The band is known for its mix of rock and soul. Devastator is the band’s third release, following Please Come Back and Tell Me from 2006.
The band’s first single “Set In Stone” has a lively sound that’s aided by the vibrant discoesque rhythm [...]

The Bloomington band, Beyond Things, release their debut album, Our Call Outs this month. The nine-song album, a split label release on Ephemeroptera Music and Plan-It-X Records, features a unique blend of folk rock, Latin and indie. These and other genres are explored to the fullest throughout the album.
One of the more radiant spots on [...]

You might know where to find Tibetan food, Swahili conversation, and German beverages in an “English Hut.” Where could you listen to an Irish music session? What sport could you play that’s more than 2,000 years old? Devin Blankenship