Bill Floyd

From the late ’80s through the ’90s, The Flaming Lips carved their own niche of psychedelic guitar rock so successfully that few bands that could keep up with them. After the experimental four-disc set, Zaireeka, and, to a much more accessible extent, 1999’s The Soft Bulletin, the boys from Oklahoma City continued to use the […]

Folks who are getting together the CDs for their summer beach trip will probably want to toss this in along with their Sloan, Weezer and Ashley Stove, although Imperial Teen’s catchy, sing-along tunes rely more on synth grooves than guitar chops. This San Francisco quartet’s first Merge release is full of three-minute wonders worthy of […]

Electronica as a genre has been around since the late 1920s with the advent of the theremin, but recently the form has seemed in danger of being siphoned dry by sample-happy beat sharps who switch up the breaks with numbing predictability. Englishman Richard D. James, aka Aphex Twin, however, has never been farther from the […]

In Chapel Hill, a small town where there are already several independent record stores operating, where the major corporate music-store chains are represented and both Wal-Mart and Best Buy lie just over the county line, it’s valid to ask: Just how many small shops can one limited population support? Answer: If it’s the right kind […]

Holy shit, someone finally got to Sam Coomes. With their last couple of efforts, the Olympia drum and keyboard duo has garnered well-deserved props from critics and fans alike for their intriguing pop melodies. Coomes custom builds his keyboards, implementing special effects and distortion, while Sleater-Kinney’s Janet Weiss (Coomes’ ex-wife) shows how spectacularly expressive a […]

The best music makes you levitate. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the soul crooner lifting you above your sorrow with his own, or the punk rocker screaming out a juvenile hope that your cynical experience can’t quite deny; if it doesn’t get your feet at least a couple of inches off the floor, it’s probably […]