Welcome to this re-post of an Avocado Artist Spotlight on Chapel Hill guitar heroes Archers of Loaf: four guys who made rock music that was frequently full of off-kilter eccentricity, unbridled aggression (burly, arty garage-punk? Apocalyptic noise-pop?), and a strange, bruised beauty. Up top: Archers frontman Eric Bachmann (in his post-Archers guise of Crooked Fingers) doing a semi-recent solo acoustic rendition of one of the Archers’ defining “hits”. Uncluttered by the raucous sonic detritus that was a Loaf trademark, what shines through there is the essential tunefulness and self-deprecating melancholy (“You’re not the one who let me down / But … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Archers of Loaf

Fleetwood Mac is really 4 or 5 different, only tangentially related bands.  Starting as a spinoff project from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers as a vehicle for Peter Green to continue his blues work, they suffered through an unusual number of lineup changes, particularly affecting the frontmen and women.  The only stalwart members are the rhythm section and band namesakes Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. The morphed into a MOR Rock outfit and eventually along with the Eagles the exemplars of California rock.  And boy, the drama and the drugs!  I won’t say much about that.  It’s a whole different story, one … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Fleetwood Mac

“Drop the “The.” Just “Alkaline Trio.” It’s cleaner” – Mike Park to Matt Skiba. Probably.   Growing up in the northwest suburbs of the Chicagoland area, they were among the more well-known punk acts, despite getting little radio play. I’d say that’s due to their sound and timing. They came together at the tail end of the 90s, when the glory days of pop-punk had already faded from the airwaves and was being replaced by the heavy audio assault of nu-metal. So there probably wasn’t much demand for Jawbreaker-influenced punk rock about heartbreak, drugs, alcohol, death, and the devil. Not unless … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Alkaline Trio

“You can never give / the finger to the blind.” 

And with that bizarre, hilarious non-sequitur dryly delivered over a rubbery, wobbly slow-motion guitar riff, Luna took off.

 Luna was the successor to songwriter/guitarist Dean Wareham’s beloved cult band Galaxie 500. 

But in the early 90’s, Galaxie 500 were more heard-about than actually-heard; for a while there, the records were out of print and hard to get hold of, and there was no YouTube to check out. 

 I might have heard Luna first; they put out a run of records from 1992-2004 (most of which are consistently good, with … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Luna

I bloody love The Dollyrots. Everything about them is a smile generator. They’re an explosion of happy pop-punk where you’re never more than 3 minutes from a “Whoo!” The Dollyrots are Kelly Ogden on bass and vocals and Luis Cabezas on guitar, childhood sweethearts from Land o’Lakes, Florida, They formed the band ‘No Chef’ at college singing songs about “Ninjas, Zombies and Charles Manson” The 2000 election results spurred them into going full time. As Ogden put it “The world’s probably gonna end anyway, and I don’t want to go to med school,” so we thought, “Let’s just do the … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: The Dollyrots

As pop music junkies, I’m sure everyone reading this has that favorite band that came oh so close but never quite broke through; usually they have a decent first record or two, then make that leap into the awareness of the general populace, follow it up with another well-received album, and then….pffffftttt, whether through the lifestyle taking its toll, lineup changes, death, or simply bad luck, the momentum they had built up to that point just peters out and they’re left as a never-was. New Jersey’s Smithereens followed that road, making earnest, British Invasion worshiping college rock through the 80s; … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: The Smithereens

Usually I do these chronologically, as most artists have a career arc of building to (x) and then declining, and that leads to a fairly easy narrative to construct. Juno Reactor don’t have any sort of narrative, as they seem to have never really broken through past a certain level. Their best-known work was in a landmark film, but no one knows who the hell they are. Juno Reactor was formed in the early 90s by British musician/producer Ben Watkins; Watkins had an Eno-esque desire to make non-commercial music that was a collaboration with artists in other media – films, … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Juno Reactor

Singer, songwriter, music producer, model, actress. Janelle Monáe wears a lot of hats. And a few suits. She is quirky without being annoying, creative while still being accessible, and eclectic while still having her own identity. She is beloved by many, but deserves to be loved by a whole lot more. Janelle Monáe Robinson was born in December, 1985, in Kansas City, Kansas. So, if you ever felt a Wizard of Oz vibe from any of her work, then that is probably the reason. She lived there for a while before moving to New York City. In 2001, she moved to Atlanta, … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Janelle Monáe

Being Brazilian musical royalty seems pretty cool. Besides the benefits of being rich, you get to grow up with incredible musicians hanging out with your fam all the time, jet-set around the world, and live off the goodwill of millions. Then you can start your own career as a musical icon. Bebel Gilberto lives this life. Bebel is the daughter of singer-composer-guitarist João Gilberto, who is generally credited with creating the bossa nova genre, and singer-composer Miúcha, another star of that world. She grew up in New York, Mexico City, and Rio de Janeiro, like most of us. Not surprisingly, her parents … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Bebel Gilberto -Electro Bossa Nova Is Actually Pretty Great

The guiding voice and often the only voice (writer, composer, guitarist, pianist, and vocalist) behind the low-fi rock of the Mountain Goats, John Darnielle today is an acclaimed author whose early autobiographic rock songs turned into bizarre lovecraftian poetry and extended narratives and great acts of empathic projection into the inner lives of his protagonists. 1991 to 1994 Cassette Mumbling If there’s a criticism of John, it’s his voice. It’s too mumbly. His early recordings bore that out. The poetry is all there, the lyrics, but if you were to hear it you would be able to pick out the … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: The Mountain Goats

Gorillaz is a band that plays… well, it’s hard to figure out what exactly they play, because it exists at a strange crossroads of rock, soul, electronic, and hip-hop that usually somehow hashes out to be a peculiar sort of pop. Like, I think, most mainstream fans of the band, I discovered them through the singles that supported the release of their 2004 album Demon Days. The band consists, within its own internal fiction, of four members: terminally-stupid, terminally-pretty lead singer Stuart “2D” Pot, demonic bass player Murdoc Niccals, genetically-engineered supersoldier turned rock god Noodle, and metaphorically- and literally-haunted drummer Russel … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Gorillaz

As a teenager surfing through Pitchfork’s daunting Top 100 Albums of the 80’s list, one square in particular caught my eye. Galaxie 500’s On Fire: the perfect band name, the perfect album title, and an incendiary album cover that seemed to radiate pure energy. Instead of, y’know, reading the blurb, I imagined what On Fire sounded like based entirely on one hazy orange group photo. I heard fast sunshine, blazing hooks, and howling vocals. Imagine my disappointment when I first listened to one of the most gorgeous albums of all time. “Why are they playing so slow? Their name is GALAXIE 500.” As I … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Blake Babies

Kayo Dot are the weirdest, most confounding band in the world, and possibly ever. Each of their 9 bizarre albums has its own distinct mood and personality, to say nothing of how they actually sound. At times, the band appears to be tinkering with its approach and style mid-song. Sonically adventurous and structurally meticulous as they come, lead singer/composer/only constant member Toby Driver (vocals, guitar, bunch of other shit) has forged his own path many times over, taking every release as an opportunity to expand on what came before, to take this strange project to the outer limits of his and … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Kayo Dot

“If I could kick his head in, fickle little boyfriend, I’d be satisfied If I could smack some sense into his senses, I might feel alright” Lines from ‘Wishing He Was Dead’ there, a song which encapsulates what I love about this band, or at least their second album Yes, a 60s Girl Group with modern aggression is a gimmick but it’s a good one and they execute it perfectly. It took quite a while for them to get there though. That’s from 2010 and they formed in 2001. Originally a 3 piece with a combined age of 46, they … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: The Like

You know those Youtube videos that are just like “How every _____ song is written”, where some guy walks you through the recurring themes and formulas a certain artist tends to return to over and over again? If they ever get popular or recognizable enough (and there’s a good chance they will), no doubt someone will make one of those for Phantogram – piling on a loud, massive trip-hop beat, a dark smoky minor-key synth-driven atmosphere, disembodied vocal samples, and a distinctive, ethereal high-pitched female voice singing about “Feeling like I’m gonna die” and “Walk with me to the edge”. … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Phantogram

Although music is very important to me, I rarely bring it up on the Avocado. For one, I don’t know that I’ve listened to much of anything that anyone else here has. There’s the Beatles and the Stones, and then a smash cut to Indie (or independent) very white liberal 90s-current rock, which I like mostly for the rhyme schemes. After a bout of depression in 2006-2010, music, and music acquisition, kept me going. I liked hunting down and sifting through vast quantities of music to find the one song I really liked from an unknown band. Traditional hipster behavior, … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: The Capstan Shafts