OK World mixes it up

By Dustin Silgardo | Gig Reviews, Gigs April 12, 2012

OK World, April 11, Blue Frog Mumbai: You know you’ve witnessed something compelling when it takes you till the end of the gig to notice the elderly man bouncing and clapping like a cymbal-banging monkey toy behind you. Multi-genre bassist Shrikant Sriram, better known as just Shri, and new jazz pianist Bugge Wesseltoft’s new group [...]

Radiohead – Skirting on the Surface (Live)

By Simon Vozick-Levinson | New Music, Reviews, Singles April 12, 2012

Radiohead have been peppering the set lists on their latest arena tour with some new works in progress – prime hunks of red meat for fans left ravenous by last year’s all-too-brief The King of Limbs. One highlight, “Identikit,” is a sly siren song: “When I see you messing me around, I don’t want to [...]

The Shins – Port Of Morrow

By Jon Dolan | Albums, New Music, Reviews April 12, 2012

The Shins‘ 2004 microhit “New Slang” established one of the more pliant templates in 2000s pop – Feist, Bon Iver and Mumford & Sons all owe something to its frumpy intimacy and strummy, mumbled moodiness. But James Mercer has been stretching for something grander ever since; 2007′s Wincing the Night Away was almost prog-rock in [...]

Florence and the Machine – MTV Unplugged

By Rolling Stone | Albums, New Music, Reviews April 12, 2012

Nothing minor happens in a Florence Welch song. While most of us worry about hangnails or roaming charges, her mind is gripped by images of blindness, despair, suicide and other symptoms of love. On Unplugged, she intensifies the turbulence of her LPs and adds two covers, including a hushed “Try a Little Tenderness” that stands [...]

The Mars Volta – Noctourniquiet

By Jon Dolan | Reviews March 30, 2012

It’s been three years since the noisiest little prog-rock band in Texas put out a record, but they haven’t been slacking. Their newest is a “future punk” experiment based on a comic-book villain (Solomon Grundy) and a Greek myth (Hyacinthus). Ner-dee! The results send the band’s usual tornado time signatures through some serious synth-and-gear grind; [...]

Madonna – MDNA

By Rolling Stone | Albums, Reviews March 28, 2012

Early one morning the sun was shining and she was lying in bed, wondering why he had her cash and if her hair was still red. An idea for a song bubbled, and she wasn’t sure if this one should be about heartbreak, revenge or the old get-into-the-groove thing. And [...]

Lana Del Ray – Born To Die

By Rob Sheffield | Albums, Reviews March 19, 2012

The self-proclaimed “gangster Nancy Sinatra” puts on a snoozy seductress act

Bruce Springsteen – Wrecking Ball

By David Fricke | Albums, Reviews March 19, 2012

★★★★★ (Columbia) Wrecking Ball is the most despairing, confrontational and musically turbulent album Bruce Springsteen has ever made. He is angry and accusing in these songs, to the point of exhaustion, with grave reason. The America here is a scorched earth: razed by profiteers, and suffering a shameful erosion in truly democratic values and national [...]

Van Halen – A Different Kind Of Truth

By Rob Sheffield | Albums March 19, 2012

★★★1/2 (Interscope) We’ve earned this, right? When David Lee Roth and Van Halen went down their own separate mean streets in the Eighties, who paid the price? We did. Van Halen fans everywhere have suffered through the years, waiting for this reunion. We don’t need it to be Fair Warning or Van Halen II. We [...]

Split – Counting Perfume

By Sharin Bhatti | Albums, Reviews March 16, 2012

Split throw themselves wide open with debut record Split- Counting Perfume (3/5) Independent Two years ago, Mumbai’s oldest alt grunge act Split handed out their debut EP P is for Pig compiling some of their most popular live songs. But the complete package from over nine years of music in here, on Counting Perfume – [...]