It’s a testament to the natural-born arena-bred talents of Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn that no matter how many well-worn formal elements, humdrum lyrical bromides, or suspect views on gender roles they soil their music with, they nearly always end up producing some of Nashville’s highest-quality work. The duo’s latest,…

Eve 6 has managed a few blasts of radio-ready teen angst made palatable by expensive guitar crunch, snappy choruses, and front man Max Collins’ practiced bellow; the band’s debut single, “Inside Out,” still sounds pretty good on mix CDs, and 2000’s “Here’s to the Night” could pass for a featherweight…

The last several releases by former Spacemen 3 guitarist Jason Pierce’s psychedelic-gospel outfit Spiritualized — Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997 Live, and 2001’s Let It Come Down — have been as much about Pierce’s tendency toward staggering production costs as his…

“Try, try, try,” Billy Corgan moaned shortly before his Smashing Pumpkins turned to mush. If history is any indication, he was most likely imploring the Little Mermaid’s dad to turn him into a dolphin, but he might well have been talking to his future self: “Billy, when the Pumpkins break…

Redheaded Lena Katina and brown-haired Julia Volkova are t.A.T.u., two Russian teenagers who may or may not be lesbians involved in a steamy underage relationship; 200 km/h in the Wrong Lane, their English-language debut, is scorched-earth teen-exploitation pop nearly as good as “My Boyfriend’s Back” and “Leader of the Pack.”…

The soundtrack to the new Laurence Fishburne motorcycle fiasco, Biker Boyz, skews toward those hip-hop loyalists enticed by big-screen Ruff Ryders iconography — typical Jadakiss bluster; a tasty Redman joint; Mowett & Loon’s awful, Toto-sampling “Tru Rider” — but it also takes a cue from Kid Rock (who turns up…

The new TLC record feels less icky to me than the last Who tour, but I’m not sure why. Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey explained their quick return to the road in July with a well-paid session guy in John Entwistle’s place as a tribute to the enduring spirit of…

Dolly Parton has spent the past couple of decades vacillating between roles as country-music doyenne, theme-park financier, and Hollywood curiosity — a wide range, even for a woman who can’t have an article written about her that doesn’t include a reference to her ample bosom (see?). But her latest incarnation,…

The congenitally collegiate Brooklyn-based indie-pop outfit Aden named its last two albums, Black Cow and Hey 19, after Steely Dan songs, and though the idiosyncrasies the band buries within the fussy clean-channel noodling on its new Topsiders probably wouldn’t attract the attention of Messrs. Fagen and Becker– (Can you imagine…

If The Willies is any indication, Bill Frisell could probably make “Achy Breaky Heart” sound like a walk in the clouds. Here, the rangy jazz guitarist, banjo player (and Bad Liver) Danny Barnes, and bassist Keith Lowe revisit the terrain Frisell explored on 1995’s Nashville, spinning a handful of folk…

There’s no question that Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo has become a better, deeper songwriter with each of his band’s four albums: Where he used to use shabby clothes as a clunky metaphor for congenial heartbreak, he now lets all his frayed edges hang out in chronicling his growing alienation from…

For all its technical, sample-splicing glory, the reason DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing… became a modern classic was how deftly it conjured the raw source code of human melancholy out of elements pilfered from a seemingly infinite pile of dusty thrift-shop vinyl. No other electronic musician had come so close to investing…

If there’s one thing the world most definitely does not need right now, it’s another watery mix CD from some overhyped trance DJ — you know, the ones with the tastefully modernist cover art (invariably featuring a handsome European staring meaningfully into space) and the interminable synth buildups that eventually…

Not much these days lives up to the idea of the present we’ve sold ourselves through the culture of the past. Didn’t it seem ten years ago, when alternative rock was just beginning to elbow its way onto radio playlists — when weird shit like dancemeisters My Life with the…

Look hard enough and you can see Stephen Malkmus smiling on the inside of his first solo album. He smirks, too — ever heard a Pavement record? — but by the time he gets to the sparkling “Jenny and the Ess-Dog,” he’s practically beaming, finally brushing the hair out of…

Oranger is three guys playing guitars and whatnot, singing songs that sound like the Beatles’ about girls who sound like fun. Like Denver’s Apples in Stereo (who sing about drugs that sound like fun) or Canada’s Sloan (who sing about being in bands that sound like fun), Oranger doesn’t churn…

Do you believe in rock ‘n’ roll? Or to be more succinct, can music save your mortal soul? Ask the nine Canadians in Godspeed You Black Emperor!, and they’ll probably give you a quizzical look, turn to each other, nod in apocalyptic agreement, then proceed to blow your brains out…

TitanElevator (Tombola!/Virgin) Of these two discs — both from Mexican would-be Becks — Plastilina Mosh’s sophomore release, Juan Manuel, is the better, mostly because it’s more of a live-band thing than a band-in-a-box product. “Boombox Baby,” the record’s second track, is its best: bubble-gum bass, chicken-scratch guitar, lemon-meringue synth. Its…

Thoughts of birds and whatever cloud my brain. I can see some through the window. The birds are getting to my brain through my ears, and they’re getting there through my headphones, which are whispering the songs of Ágætis Byrjun, the new album by Icelandic quartet Sigur Rós, to me…