One of this year’s most effective music videos is also one of the most flagrantly ridiculous. In the grandiose black and white footage accompanying The Joy Formidable’s “Wolf’s Law,” the full cycle of life

 A lot of things were different for Walk The Moon when it came time to record their second album. Where the group’s debut, I Want! I Want!, was self-produced and self-released, the band signed to major label RCA

FM 102.1 has been running its top 200 songs of the 2000s countdown all week, so at this point I don't think I'm spoiling anything if I note the countdown's top song: "Seven National Army" by The White Stripes.  It's an inspired choice. In a decade when the genre spawned few lasting stars, The White Stripes were one of the few acts that made alternative rock seem as fresh and limitless as it ha...

While critics are reserving their heaviest fire for the mostly innocuous Asher Roth, a one-man Flobot with delussional Eminem aspirations, a much more obnoxious monster is gaining traction: Cage The Elephant. Through means I don't fully understand, though I suspect they involved NME magazine, this Kentucky band recently conquered England, and now they're returning to American shores bi...

During the CD sales boom of the '90s, labels didn't need much of an excuse to release a tribute album, and although most of the decade's compilations were cheap cash-ins, a handful are true treasures. 1994's If I Were a Carpenter, which I found buried in a dollar bin in a Florida record store last month, remains a cherished relic from the era. It was an oddity from the start, assembling a slew of ...

The ever-wonderful Ryan Miller introduced me to some of his fellow FM 102.1 DJs last night at the Shepherd�s Best of Milwaukee party, and our conversation turned to songs long since retired from the station�s regular play list. We covered favorites brought back occasionally (Tori Amos� �Cornflake Girl�) and novelties unlikely to return anytime soon (The Ass Ponies� �Little Bastard�), which led me ...

A decade later the Internet would begin to rob music of its monetary value, but in the early �90s, music was expensive, and I couldn�t afford much of it. A compact disc might cost $12 or $13, which was a lot of lot of cash for an 11 year old, so if you saved up and bought a CD that turned out to be a lemon, you listened to it ad nauseam anyway. For lack of better music�or at least more music�I m...

With their high-gloss arena-rock, flashy live shows and tender, soundtrack-ready songs, Northern Room had appropriately been flagged as one of Milwaukee's most commercially promising bands, but the group announced yesterday that they will be breaking up following their headlining show Nov 8. at the Turner Hall Ballroom. They e-mailed the news, which has since been posted on the Turner Hall Web sit...

Milwaukee’s Monostatic has spent the last two years residing largely under the radar of the city’s scene, although this could be because frontman Billy O'Neill also heads Chicago's art-rock favorites Oh My God. What seemingly started out as a side project for O'Neill has begun to take shape in an eclectic and delightful way.

This is always promising to see: Fever Marlene, a slick Milwaukee alternative-rock duo with a flair for networking that suggests they have a shot at bigger things, has been booked to headline a concert at the Turner Hall Ballroom, while The Redwalls, a mediocre and perpetually over-hyped Illinois band with a major-label CD under the belt, have been booked as their openers. Needless to sa...