Music Reviews: Alternative Rock

Though not a descendant from grunge’s Seattle headquarters, San Diego’s Stone Temple Pilots was a force to reckon with. Its take on the genre by emphasizing 70s-based hard rock with hints of psychedelia and jazz allowed it to protrude and distinguish itself from masses of flannel. The debut album, 1992’s Core, wove into grunge lore with four hit singles and sales in America alone of over 8 million copies. After its first worldwide tour and a hyped appearance on MTV’s... Read More

Collaborations by Aerosmith/Run DMC and Anthrax/Public Enemy bridged the gap between rock and rap. By the early 2000s, Linkin Park became the poster boys of the nu-metal movement. The muscle of Chester Bennington’s passionate vocals and Brad Delson’s crunchy guitar riffs juxtaposed Mike Shinoda’s rapping and Joe Hahn’s sampling/scratching, with bassist Dave Farrell and drummer Rob Bourdon gluing it all together. To say this fusion was a mild success is an... Read More

Seattle was the epicenter of the grunge movement. Just as the genre peaked in the early 1990s with bands like Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains dominating the scene, a band from a state further south would shake up the roost. Hailing from San Diego and originally named Mighty Joe Young, Stone Temple Pilots encapsulated the spirit of 1970s hard rock with hints of the relative alternative rock scene. The buzz from their 1990 demo and massive following... Read More

Brotherhood kills two birds with one stone. The first bird climbs high altitudes, showing no hesitation. This bird possesses two key qualities: strength and valiancy. Strength—the ability to grapple the truth—compliments valiancy. Above the clouds one finds the first bird. It soars despite the truth: if it falls, the ground takes its life. On the ground one finds the second bird, the first bird’s antithesis. Whilst the first bird aims beyond the sky, the second bird... Read More

As someone who’d missed the early psycho-garage days and didn’t care all that much for the “Jelly” song, I was fully unprepared for the full force of what the Flaming Lips had become when they touched down in Athens, Georgia in September of 2000. Sure, the LSD helped, but long before we were inside of its fluorescent metallic grip, it was clear that the Category-5 euphoria of their live show could not be denied. Let’s remember that at the time, they were performing as... Read More

"Wish", by English gothic rock band The Cure, was released just three months before I was born in 1992, and while this album might coincide with the beginning of my time on this earth, for The Cure, "Wish" was the bookend on a fruitful period of pop dominance in the late 80s. The band that once assembled barren, bleak post-punk landscapes on albums like "Faith" and "Pornography" had, by 1985, with the release of "Head on... Read More

(This review, written by Carl E. Baugher, originally appeared in Issue 7, Spring 1996.)P is Gibby Haynes (Butthole Surfers), Johnny Depp (Edward Scissorhand), Bill Carter and Sal Jenco. Also, as it says on the back of the LP jacket, “P is a land, not a liquid or a fruit.” Uh, ok. Not by any means the discordant thrash you might expect from this Gibby-led bunch, this quirky, curious album is consistently engaging, with a wide range of musical variety and coarse, crude... Read More

The mythology that has been purposefully built up around Goat is sparse but compelling. An anonymous masked voodoo collective playing psychedelic afrobeat-tinged rock, from a village called Korpilombolo in northern Sweden? It’s a nice yarn, and whether it is true or not seems irrelevant when the potency of the music itself blows away the need for a good origin story. (It turns out they actually are from northern Sweden.) If you have seen Goat perform live, you will... Read More

(This review originally appeared in Issue 7, Spring 1996.)Not since Moby Grape has so much talent been victim to dumb circumstance. Mann hit it big out of the gate with ‘Til Tuesday’s 1984 hit “Voices Carry.” You’d think two gold records would vindicate her pop musical instincts, but when Mann begin edging away from the drum machine/synth rut she’d dug for herself, towards folkier, acoustic guitar-based music, her label resisted, ultimately killing the group’s third... Read More