René Spencer Saller

Will Johnson is the indie-rock equivalent of Joyce Carol Oates, cranking out a seemingly endless supply of songs for his various musical personae: cerebral head-bangers for Centro-matic, rawboned alt-folk for his solo ventures, and delirious countrified pop for South San Gabriel, a band that comprises all four members of Centro-matic plus a rotating cast of […]

Since releasing his first cassette in 1991, John Darnielle, a singer/songwriter who records as the Mountain Goats, has authored more than 400 songs, most of which are better than any number of songs you’re likely to hear. Don’t beat yourself up for overlooking his brilliance, though. For more than a decade, Darnielle hid his light […]

A paraplegic since 1983 and an acclaimed singer/songwriter since 1988, when he was Officially Discovered by Michael Stipe, Vic Chesnutt has enjoyed a long, prolific, and adventurous career. He’s cut albums with scores of supporting musicians — from countrypolitan iconoclasts Lambchop to jam-band stalwarts Widespread Panic — but no matter how dramatically his sound has […]

It’s a shame that Martha Wainwright is blessed with such hypeworthy DNA. There are many other interesting, even important things to say about the Brooklyn-based, Montreal-reared singer/songwriter, but her genes won’t cooperate. Demanding obeisance, they elbow their way into the listening experience and prevent us from hearing things we might have noticed if we didn’t […]

Never mind that Beck looks approximately 15. Never mind that he previewed songs from Guero, his eighth album, on The O.C. He’s 34 years old, married, and a new father. Is it any surprise that his decision to re-enlist the Dust Brothers, the beat scientists behind his double-platinum Odelay, has been roundly dismissed as the […]

Apart from fame and riches, former Squirrel Nut Zipper Andrew Bird has it all. He is to the violin what Jimi Hendrix was to the guitar, which is to say not merely a virtuoso but also a visionary. In Bird’s delicate hands, the violin is only a vehicle, the most convenient means by which to […]

You don’t intend to watch American Idol,  really you don’t, but like millions of your lumpen brethren, you find yourself prostrate on the couch every week, gawking at the televised trainwreck. Simon, Paula, and Randy make their predictable assessments, but it’s the viewers who decide, by way of telephone and text messaging, the outcome of […]

Like most worthwhile artists, the Los Angeles-based folk singer Mia Doi Todd is a mess of contradictions. This slipperiness, this ability to be simultaneously one thing and its opposite, makes listening to her interesting, but it makes describing her difficult. How can a singer sound both intimate and declamatory, both pretentious and plainspoken? Where does […]

Besides being a character in a William S. Burroughs novel, Clem Snide is a band, a funny and touching alt-countrified/indie-rock band whose frontman and singer/songwriter, Eef Barzelay, is often accused of being too clever for his own good. For many music fans — especially those passionately invested in their own sense of uniqueness — cleverness […]

The consensus on The Great Destroyer, Low’s seventh full-length and first for Sub Pop, is that it represents a Great Departure. Adjectives that have never before appeared in reviews of the Duluth, Minn.-based trio — “aggressive,” “loud,” “rocking” — have been edging out the usual descriptors (“hushed,” “narcoleptic,” “austere”). If anyone took rock critics halfway […]

Sure, globalization has its drawbacks: McDonald’s in the ruins, Wal-Marts in the rainforest, Guatemalan peasants quoting Dr. Phil. Sometimes, though, it’s pretty great, and Maya Arulpragasam, a Sri Lanka–raised, London-based MC who goes by the tag M.I.A., is all the proof you need that a shrunken, mongrelized, borderless world doesn’t necessarily mean oppression and colonialism […]

Super Furry AnimalsSongbook: The Singles, Vol. 1 (XL) Let’s give it up for Wales. As if Dylan Thomas, Bertrand Russell, and John Cale weren’t enough, the vowel-challenged British principality has seen fit to favor us with the Super Furry Animals, a maverick rock quintet that’s been making brilliantly silly, unexpectedly moving records since 1995. Although […]