Reviews

There's lots to love in the latest gleeful offering from the pen of BUSTs genius cartoonist-in-residence Esther Pearl Watson. Purportedly based on a real teenager's 1989 diary found in a Las Vegas truck-stop restroom, Watson's comic strip, Unlovable, narrates the exploits of hapless high-schooler Tammy Pierce as she navigates the glories and humiliations of small-town adolescence with unbeatably clueless bravado.

The Black Keys sixth full-length, Brothers, is a platter heaped with slogging, swampy, sweltering takes on blues tradition.

It's hard to believe it's been five years since Broken Social Scene dropped their last album, but within minutes of listening to their new release, Forgiveness Rock Record, it's obvious that no one has even come close to challenging them as the indie-rock collective of the aughts.

I'm pretty sure I read once that fairies use music to lure humans into a fatal sleep. Not wanting to take any chances after my first listen of CocoRosie's Grey Oceans, I brewed black tea and kept a vigilant eye.

Aided and abetted by sultry Alison Mosshart, Jack White blackens garage blues into a thick, gooey tar on the supergroup's second album, Sea of Cowards. The wooly, bottom-heavy, 70s-funk thump oozes menace like Jimmy Page coming down from heroin or Deep Purple heard through a hit of brown acid.

The Fall have been around so long, you'd think they'd need no introduction, but since most of you kittens weren't even born when this U.K. punk band got its start in 1976, allow me to introduce you to one of the most seminal bands of the genre.

Growing grew from a seed planted in Olympia, WA (where Wynne Greenwood from Tracy + the Plastics briefly played keyboard for them), in 2001; now the three bandmates who make up this dancey noise ensemble reside in Brooklyn and have released a new album, Pumps!

This self-titled debut from the Chicago-based fivesome delivers organ-heavy pop music with handclaps and straightforward rhythms.

Summer parties on rooftops need soundtracks, and Javelins No Más is the perfect album to covet all season long.

When you make an electronic album as critically acclaimed as James Murphy's LCD Soundsystem did in 2007 with Sound of Silver, it's hard not to expect a letdown.