Alec Hanley Bemis

Photo by Do Lee Animal Collective’s new Sung Tongs is a midcareer revelation, forging an entirely new sound so obvious, so natural, that it seems like what they should have been doing all along. In that way, it ranks with Radiohead’s O.K. Computer, the Notwist’s Neon Golden and My Bloody......

Photo by Alejaddro Ros My first encounter with Argentine singer-songwriter Juana Molina was in 2002, with Segundo — deeply private music full of detuned synthesizers, acoustic guitars, bird sounds, deep-space chirps and Molina’s singsong melodies. The rhythms were complicated yet leisurely, in a way familiar to fans of Brazilian music......

Photo by Anne Leithauser By my count, there are at least four new records by young bands that derive influence — direct or indirect — from that most bastard of genres, progressive rock, the early-to-mid-’70s music whose stock-in-trade was bloat, pretension and opaque references to the incomprehensible. And I think......

Photo by Alicia J. Rose DECEMBERISTS at Spaceland, January 18 Two-thirds into their set, Decemberists front man Colin Meloy slung his guitar around his back, bandmate Chris Funk did the same, and the two staged a mock guitar duel. Both were solid though not virtuosic, and it came together more......

Photo by Kevin Westenberg I am extremely Caucasian. My background would be a liability in discussing the new disco-punks except for the fact that they’re extremely Caucasian, too. And though they may not have listened to Poison and Phil Collins in their youth, they certainly absorbed Van Halen and the......

Photo courtesy Domino RecordsJUANA MOLINA at the Silent Movie Theater, July 25 Last week, the Argentine singer-songwriter Juana Molina played an invite-only show at the Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax — “an intimate concert for industry and press.” Molina lived in Los Angeles for a spell in the late ’90s......