(April 2026) Episode 718 is L.A. WITCH, the answer to the question: what if Mazzy Star were a garage rock band? This is a contemporary all-female trio out of – you guessed it – Los Angeles. Singer/guitarist Sage Sanchez employs an echo-laden, languid vocal style that evokes Hope Sandoval, with a twangy guitar that gives the Cramps. Their third and most recent album (2025) asks the question: what if Mazzy Star were a new wave band?
(July 2025) Episode 662 is THE HIGH DIALS. This is a good reminder to apply robust skepticism to any contemporary band given the label “psychedelic.” This Canadian outfit’s initial album, A New Devotion, drew me in by offering promise with Beatles/Byrds-style baroque rock songs. But thereafter they descend into that 21st century kind of pop/rock that over-processes voice and instruments into a lush-ness that someone decided to improperly label psychedelic, thereby insulting all the art and artistry of the OG psychedelic aesthetic. “Open Up the Gates” from their third album was good neo-psychedelia, though.
(June 2025) Episode 656 is LUSH, among the top-tier of bands whose name describes their sound. That was from the first part of their career in the early 1990s, when they helped introduce the shoegaze sound of ethereal, sweeping guitars, represented on several EPs and their first album. By their third and last album (1996’s Lovelife), Lush has turned to the prevalent Britpop sound. (Their second album was a transition between the two.) I like both styles, but kinda favor the shoegaze and Miki Berenyi’s floating vocals.
Episode 649 is TIM BUCKLEY and JEFF BUCKLEY. Tim is an acquired taste, and he hasn’t acquired mine. His five-octave voice is impressive, but I’ve never warmed to the crooning way he employed it. It often feels discordant to the music underneath, even as he varies his style from folk to avant-garde to pop. I appreciate the experimentalism of Starsailor, which has become a cult classic. It may seem odd to append Jeff here, as he was never part of his father’s life, but it’s the only way I could review him as he had only one studio album, Grace, but what a fine album that is. His “Hallelujah” is among the best covers that surpasses the original. Jeff inherited his father’s many-octave voice, but uses it more pleasantly.
Recommendation: You should know Jeff’s Grace. Try Tim’s more conventional eponymous album or Goodbye and Hello, or the weird Starsailor, to see if it fits your taste.
(February 2025) Episode 634 is PARQUET COURTS. Take equal parts 80s college rock, 90s indie/alt, 00s angular rock, add a pinch of 60s Velvet Underground, and you have Parquet Courts. They were a very welcome find, running counter to my general disappointment/lack of interest in 21st century ‘rock’ bands. Their music is creatively quirky, with clever or snarky lyrics. Their 2018 album Wide Awake! is their most accessible, but that signaled an incorporation of electronic beats that dominated 2021’s disappointing Sympathy for Life. I prefer the off-kilter simplicity of earlier albums.
(October 2024) Episode 606 is SUEDE (sometimes known in the U.S. as LONDON SUEDE) and ELASTICA. Suede is listed among the “Big Four” of Britpop, and are credited with being the first, but I never knew them. And I learned there’s a reason for that; they took their sound in a different direction and lacked the hooks, snarl, melodicism or cheekiness of Oasis, Blur and Pulp. I find Brett Anderson’s singing pretentious and their music boring. But the real reason I did this episode was to have an excuse to review Elastica (not enough albums to qualify on their own). The connection* is that Justine Frischmann was Suede’s first guitarist. I love “Connection” (hand claps!) and the rest of their stuff is hooky and catchy.
(July 2024) Episode 585 is THE FEELIES. Their first album Crazy Rhythms (1980) is a gem of post-punk nerdy angular rock. But everything after that bores me. I suspect this opinion will alienate me from some peers. It is obvious they take inspiration from the Velvet Underground and Lou Reed (confirmed in a decent VU cover album released last year). And sometimes you hear wisps of Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo in the pulses. But my immense love for those three bands does not translate to The Feelies. I don’t mind jangly guitars in the right context, but a lot of The Feelies feels like just jangling for jangling’s sake.
(July 2024) Episode 582 is CRACKER. Following the eclectic approach of Camper Van Beethoven (episode 61), Dave Lowery went more conventional with Cracker. They got notice as 90s alt-rockers but the albums shift between alt, roots rock, and country-rock. Cracker is fine music: meaning, the songs are satisfying but it’s also not going to get you out of your seat. At times the songs tend to run together, but going through their discography, each album has its own personality, and that keeps it interesting. As do Lowery’s wise-ass vocals.
Recommendation: For classic 90s alt, the first two albums (Cracker and Kerosene Hat); for a different 00s alt, Forever and Greenland; for curiously enjoyable “California country,” Countrysides and the second disc on Berkley to Bakersfield.
Episode 572 is XTC. As mentioned, I’ve enjoyed getting into the stuff that burst of the late-70s UK post-punk scene. Unlike others, XTC did not start out as a punk band, but they slid right into the emerging sound with an angular rhythmic attack and bouncy vocals. Their beats crept up to the edge of, but never got to, ska, giving echoes of Madness. At times their boisterous vocal style evokes Adam Ant, with a bit of Joe Jackson. Like contemporaries the Stranglers and Wire, XTC endured for years, creatively adapting their sound and style, while avoiding the sinkhole of 80s synths and gated drums. The early albums are their distinctive best, but my favorite thing they did was two records posing as a late-60s British psychedelic band, the Dukes of Stratosphear – spot-on homage to my most cherished of subgenres.
Favourite album (XTC): Black Sea
Favourite album overall: Chips from the Chocolate Fireball, the combined disc of the two Dukes of Stratosphear recordings
(April 2024) Episode 561 is PAVEMENT. I’m too old to have had 90s bands be a formative part of my youth, but still close enough in age to those for whom they were. So I get that Pavement’s slacker rock fit the zeitgeist of the time. And why they gained an indie cult following. But listening to it at a remove, it doesn’t work for me. Kinda boring, gotta say. It wasn’t all bad. But too much strum-beat in here and I can’t stand strum-beat.
Recommendation: If this gives you an emotional jolt of nostalgia, sure. But I can’t recommend coming into this fresh other than as a pop culture historian.
Opus Project 