René Spencer Saller

When the terminally adorable Canadian quartet Shapes and Sizes signed to indie-rock über-cutie Sufjan Stevens’s record label, Asthmatic Kitty, the sudden surfeit of sweetness must have been overwhelming. Surely molars crumbled in its wake; blood turned to syrup; insulin waved the white flag. Only an army of tap-dancing Japanese toddlers, baby spider monkeys in matching […]

Lady & Bird is the intriguing, if slight, side project of Keren Ann Zeidel and Bardi Johannsson. Zeidel, an Israel-born Frenchwoman who now shuttles between Paris and New York, has two domestic solo releases under her belt: her English-language debut, Not Going Anywhere (2004), and Nolita, its half-French, half-English follow-up (2005). American critics slobbered mightily over […]

As long as there are girls who are suckers for sad boys, there will be a place in the global economy for the likes of Syd Matters. You won’t hear me complaining. If those girls can be blamed for The O.C. and James “Rhymes With” Blunt, they also deserve the credit for Wuthering Heights and […]

Listening to Evangelista, Carla Bozulich’s latest album, is like watching someone carve off strips of her own skin, fold them into dainty origami shapes, and present them on a cloisonné tray. The effect is at once horrifying and soothing, visceral and delicate, like Memoirs of a Geisha rewritten by Yukio Mishima. At times, the former singer […]

At least half of all marriages end in divorce, and the rate at which bands break up has to be even higher, so what are the odds that a husband-and-wife band could succeed in the long run? Whatever they are, Brett and Rennie Sparks are beating them. The Sparkses have been married for 18 years, […]

There’s a reason Vetiver gets lumped in with the freak-folk crowd, but it doesn’t have much to do with its music. Andy Cabic, the San Francisco-based collective’s only permanent member, plays guitar in Devendra Banhart’s touring band and even runs a label with him (Gnomonsong, home of Feathers and Jana Hunter). Vetiver’s 2004 debut found […]

What if the Manson Family had been less of a patriarchal death cult and more of a freeform collective? What if they’d shacked up in cool, reasonable Vermont instead of hotheaded California and collaborated on their own songs instead of parroting those of their rock-star-manqué leader? What if they’d spent more time ministering to their […]

Now that President George W. Bush’s approval ratings are stagnating around 30 percent, protest songs are fashionable again, with everyone from Pink to Pearl Jam clamoring to kick ol’ Dubya while he’s down. Sure, indie rockers such as Jay Farrar and Conor Oberst had already been there and done that, but big whoop: Most of […]

Susana Baca Traves’as (Luaka Bop) Travesías means “passages” in Spanish, and it’s an especially appropriate title for Susana Baca’s latest album, her fourth for Luaka Bop. Last August, after a trip to the Congo, the Afro-Peruvian singer and ethnomusicologist began a fellowship at Tulane University, in New Orleans, where she planned to study the music […]

When I was 5 or 6 years old, I believed that musicals were real. When the time was right, the people around me would burst into song, and we could finally stop worrying about what to say next because we’d all be in thrall to the music, borne aloft by an invisible orchestra. Our everyday […]

Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs Under the Covers, Vol. 1 (Shout! Factory) When it comes to covers, there are two schools of thought. Adherents of the first try to re-create the original song as closely as possible, which is pointless in theory yet rather lucrative in practice (could a gazillion tribute bands be wrong?). Those […]

Much has been made of Neko Case’s peerless pipes, and rightly so. Her voice, a resonant contralto, is as loud as a marching band, as bright as church bells, as delicate as peony petals. If it were a color, it would be maroon. It’s even more spectacular than her abundant auburn hair, which cascades down […]