In some ways, the story of the Kinks feels familiar: In 1962, four working-class London teenagers besotted with American R&B and country music unite. Their initial creative exertions hold a thrilling mirror back to their inspirations overseas, supercharging the sounds of Little Richard, Hank Williams, and the Ventures with the riveted a...

The exclamation point at the end of the song title is essential. For the first few minutes, “Girl!” builds itself up with precision, adding disparate elements and taking them away just as quickly, introducing you to all of the sounds that will eventually burst into the euphoric cacophony that fills the song’s second...

Coldplay’s Ghost Stories is an interesting album for a lot of reasons, and one of those reasons is the subtle way that the band integrates the sounds of the coolly minimal soul-pop currently coming out of the UK. The London duo AlunaGeorge do great work within that sound, and now they’ve remixed Coldplay’s &#822...

Opeth’s last album, 2011′s Heritage, saw the band taking an unusually stark turn away from their death metal roots — not that Opeth were ever a traditional death metal band, but Heritage was pretty much a pure psychedelic prog record. Anyone hoping for Opeth to return even to the sounds of 2001 breakthrough Blackwat...

Mark McGuire dipped out of his epic drone band Emeralds a little bit before they imploded, but since then he’s been having a fruitful solo career. His new album Along The Way is a stunner, but to tide fans over until that’s out stateside he’s just released The Sounds Of Xmas, a collection McGuire gave [...]