Alex Turner, “It’s Hard To Get Around The Wind” (2011) find it on Submarine It’s been a melancholy (yes I just used that word) week for me, which is why this track off Arctic Monkey (proper noun, not actual monkey, arctic or otherwise) Alex Turner’s highly-rec’d 6-track “soundtrack” Submarine has been getting so many spins [...]

Yuck, “Georgia” (2011) find it on Yuck “Georgia”‘s been a favorite of this year for a while now, but it’s getting the Fine Tune Friday treatment today for two reasons, neither of which have anything to do with the royal wedding. Reason number one: here in Our Nation’s Capital (disclaimer: is ours, but may not [...]

Like a ton of other people, I’m sure, my Smiths fandom has gotten a good stoking lately by the flurry of articles around the 25th anniversary of The Queen Is Dead. But instead of tackling that album, I’m starting a fight about something that’s always bugged me: Hatful Of Hollow‘s status as a classic, and [...]

James Blake, “The Wilhelm Scream” (2011) find it on James Blake James Blake’s already had a good chunk of the internet fawning over him, but I’m guessing that the hype will just get louder once his debut full-length album comes out in February. His cover of Feist’s “Limit To Your Love” is the lead single [...]

Fifteen (!) years ago, there was a question being asked of English music fans that was so pervasive, it even made it into the UK national news: “Who do you like better, Blur or Oasis?” At least, I’m told that this was a question asked a lot. The only personal knowledge I have of it [...]

If you were an indie rock fan in the early 90′s, The Wedding Present were hard to avoid. And yet…somehow I did. While my friends were filing Bizarro and Seamonsters under Favorite Albums Of All Time, I was thinking that the little bits I heard from those albums didn’t do much for me. But my [...]

In the summer of 1995, Pulp was just about to hit their peak. After over a decade of toiling away in obscurity, their previous album His ‘n’ Hers had been a critical smash and a big seller, even if huge stardom eluded them. But their new single “Common People” was riding high in the British [...]

Introducing a new column, where I have to sheepishly request a late pass for an artist, album or song that I slept on even though seemingly everyone else knew it was great. You think I would have learned my lesson with Lily Allen that a chart-pop lead single doesn’t always indicate an album of filler [...]

Stornoway, “I Saw You Blink” (2010) find it on Beachcomber’s Windowsill It’s tempting to compare Stornoway to Mumford & Sons, but I don’t like Mumford & Sons, so that’s not right. I did at first, but the more I listened to them, the less I liked them, and by the time their album fell off [...]