For more than a decade, armchair pundits and critics have voiced their two cents about the imminent death of the album as a format, and just how much life support is necessary to sustain it, or whether the plug should be pulled once and for all. Once upon a time this may very well have proven to ...

With Labor Day Weekend coming up in just a few days, it’s time to start thinking about what albums to put in the rotation for the inevitable barbecue. With summer about to come to an end, it’s hard to imagine anyone not having planned ahead, but if not, I put together a list of ten albums that ...

After eight months of releases from the likes of LCD Soundsystem, The National, Arcade Fire, Titus Andronicus, Big Boi, Robyn, Caribou and dozens of other amazing artists, it's hard to believe that there's potentially still a lot of great music to come in 2010. Oh, but it's true! Every fall is a ...

Our previous installment of the Album of the Week Mix crammed about as many indie heavy hitters into one hour-long (give or take) playlist as you could possibly fit. This time, however, there's a bit more balance between the heavyweights and the underdogs, the headliners and the more low-key acts. ...

It's shocking how easily a band's reputation can be shredded to bits by a bad album or two, especially considering how easy it is to click a Mediafire link and download whatever you want in a matter of minutes. I'm as guilty of it as anyone else. I have no expectations whatsoever for the new ...

Since beginning our 'For the Record' feature three months ago, we've essentially tackled two types of albums: widely renowned or "classic" albums that somehow evaded us in spite of their fame, and underground albums that have become highly regarded long after their time. And this month, once ...

A few weeks ago, we started publishing a weekly capsule called “Reviews in brief,” rounding up a summary of the week’s reviews in one-sentence form, along with completely arbitrary ratings, just for fun. We do this, not as a substitute for our reviews, but as a supplement. If any of our readers ...

Last September, Pavement monopolized headlines by announcing, for real this time, that they were reuniting. In the past, this kind of news might have sounded too good to be true, especially when one considers the number of Pavement reunion rumors that have circulated for years leading up to the ...

Last year, I compiled 90 Minute Guides for New Wave and Post-Punk, all the while having planned on following these genres up with a mixtape primer on punk rock itself. Somehow, that kept getting put off until later. But last month, Epitaph Records reissued Swedish hardcore heroes Refused’s classic ...

In our first couple of installments of "For the Record," the purpose of the exercise was to listen, with fresh ears, to a series of albums that are considered classic or legendary. And we had so much fun with it that we decided to make it a regular monthly feature. But this is about more than ...