Against Me!

Defend Your Ballot: Michael Tedder, Pazz and Jop 2012 Contributor

You can't really know where you're headed unless you know where you've been. For that reason, we're taking a look back at Pazz & Jop 2012 to drill down into the ballots of contributors and voters who participated. Maybe amongst the rubble we'll find clues about what lies ahead for music lovers in 20 ... More >>

The Hold Steady Stay in the Key of E Street

The bar band looks to rebound after first stumble

Six Superlative Summer Shows

Our music critic's picks for the season's hottest concerts

Live: Against Me! Buck The Norms, Duet With Joan Jett At Terminal 5

Against Me! w/The Cult, The Icarus Line Terminal 5 Friday, June 8 Better than: Being stuck in pre-tunnel traffic on a Megabus that was supposed to have left Philly at 3:30? (R.I.P. Chinatown buses.) Sorry, sorry. Better than... um, any other rawk band working right now? The critical indifference ... More >>

The Cult+Against Me!

Butch Vig On Nevermind, Siamese Dream, Garbage, And His History Of Shaping Alternative Rock As We Know It

If you don't think Butch Vig's almost singlehandedly invented two decades of alternative rock as we know it, just look at his resumé: Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Green Day, Jimmy Eat World, Foo Fighters, AFI. That's without mentioning his membership in the still-cool Garbage or the fact he prod ... More >>

Pazz & Jop Comments 2011: The Personals

Feelings, whoa-whoa-whoa

Radio Hits One: Hot 100 Peaks Only Tell Half The Story For Cee Lo, Britney Spears, And Other Year-End Winners

One of the most frustrating things about discussing the Billboard singles charts is how a song's peak position—the highest spot it occupied on a chart during its run—is almost universally regarded as the permanent measurement of its success or popularity. Any song that reaches No. 1 is e ... More >>

The 10 Best Cover Songs Of 2011

Tell your children not to walk Wye Oak's way. ​2011 was a year of looking back relentlessly, whether you were awash in Remember The '90s nostalgia or getting down at a New Kids On The Block show or watching Lady Gaga try to bring back the variety-hour era with her whacked-out Thanksgiving spec ... More >>

100 & Single: A Dozen Contenders For Billboard's Year-End Top 10, And Their Fight Against The "Last Christmas Effect"

​Later this week, Billboard is expected to announce its tallies for the biggest hits of 2011. And what a year for music it's been. Remember all those big hits: "Like a G6," "We R Who We R," "Raise Your Glass," "Fuck You!" and "What's My Name?" What's that—you say the songs I just rattle ... More >>

Live: Britney Spears And Nicki Minaj Turn Up The Bass

Nate "Igor" Smith​ Britney Spears w/Nicki Minaj Nassau Coliseum Tuesday, August 2 Better than: Being trailed by party photographers. I spent a lot of last night's Britney Spears set stressing out. That was partially by design, I suppose; the "plot" of the show had Britney being chased by a ... More >>

Live: Against Me! Go For Broke At Music Hall Of Williamsburg

​Against Me! w/Screaming Females Music Hall of Williamsburg Sunday, June 5 Better than: A lecture on the evils of "selling out" delivered by a second-semester college freshman. Against Me! played the first seven songs of their blistering set at the Music Hall of Williamsburg Sunday night one ... More >>

Britney Spears Runs on (American) Idol

Famous for being a famous singer, she shows up—and that's about it

Pazz & Jop Voter Comments: Rick Ross Lies, the Rolling Stones Plunder, and Taylor Swift Triumphs

Download Franz Nicolay's "This Is Not A Pipe"

​Hold Steady refugee Franz Nicolay has wasted no time since his defection from the band early this year; in addition to tending his 2009 solo album Major General and touring with Against Me!, he's now prepared another solo record, Luck and Courage, for October, whereupon he seems to once again ... More >>

Q&A: Against Me!'s Tom Gabel on Anarchists, Anti-Abortion Billboards, Alternative Press Magazine

tkTom is the one in black. Against Me! leader Tom Gabel is the sort of lyricist that can't stop himself from contemplating the folly of Robert McNamara's foreign policy decisions mid-song, and he's the sort of singer that can find a way to make the former Secretary of Defense's quirky name positive ... More >>

SWOON SONG

Silversun Pickups rock the waterfront

This Week, in the Voice: The Andrew Cuomo-Shelly Silver Donkey Show

​How many Democrats does it take to make a donkey show? In this week's cover story, Village Voice columnist Wayne Barrett takes account of the opposition New York gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo will actually have to face: Shelly Silver, and the rest of our state's old-school democrats.

This Week's Voice: Summer Jam 2010, Christina Aguilera, Against Me!, Bret Easton Ellis, and More

Nicki Minaj, in one of many "invincible Street Fighter 2 character" outfits. Photo by Santiago Felipe​In this week's Village Voice, Rob Harvilla keeps a running diary of Summer Jam 2010, where the best highlight Hot 97 could muster was a set from DJ Khaled. What happened, New York? Elsewhere, ... More >>

Against Me! Make Their Blue Album

White Crosses revels in the suddenly anomalous thrills of power chords

R.I.P. Plan-It-X Records

​Farewell to Plan-It-X, the erstwhile indie label that helped author the raucous punk-folk-other hybrid that Against Me! would later ride to goofy, unsatisfying major label stardom. (Plan-It-X released the band's first real EP, Crime as Forgiven By..., though the relationship later turned bitt ... More >>

Justin Bieber Tops MGMT, Plus An Analysis Of The Best-Selling (Well, Maybe) Record Store Day Singles

​This week's album chart has in its first two positions the two biggest stories in pop music last week. Once again, the pole position was assumed by Canadian teenager Justin Bieber, whose first full-length, My World 2.0, sold 92,000 copies--only the second time this year that the No. 1 album h ... More >>

Q&A: Ted Leo On Middle-Class Indie-Rock Life, His Dissatisfaction With Your Karaoke Preparation, and Five-Dollar Words

Matias Corral Ted Leo and The Pharmacists have had a tough couple of years. Their previous two record labels, legendary indies Lookout and Touch & Go, both famously (and surprisingly) went out of business without warning, and his personal and creative lives haven't run much smoother. His wife had h ... More >>

Yes In My Backyard: Download Star Fucking Hipsters' "3000 Miles Away"

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent. Banned in NYC. Photo by Alyssa Tanchajja​>New York's Star Fucking Hipsters are a joyous, double-middle-fingers-ablaze coup on political punk rock--pretty much inventing "bubblegum crust" in one grung ... More >>

Catching Up With Blake Schwarzenbach's forgetters

Generation Records finally got around to posting live footage from a late October post-CMJ show they hosted for forgetters, the reclusive Brooklyn trio fronted by Blake Schwarzenbach, whose days in Jawbreaker seem much closer, lately, than those he spent playing in Jets to Brazil. If they wanted t ... More >>

News Roundup: forgetters, Rock Writer Literary Death Match, Ghostface on Fallon

​--After getting a bit more publicly excited than we care to remember about Thorns of Life, last fall's short-lived collaboration between Jawbreaker/Jets to Brazil's Blake Schwarzenbach, Aaron Cometbus, and (The L Word's) Daniella Sea, we figured we'd just go ahead and keep quiet about forgett ... More >>

The Story of CBGB at the Tribeca Film Fest With Chris Frantz, Tommy Ramone, and Pre-Rehab Matt Pinfield

I often wonder if the legends born out of CBGB ever get tired of talking about CBGB. Certainly, at last night's Tribeca Film screening of Burning Down The House: The Story of CBGB, the "Behind the Screens" panel of Tommy Ramone, ex-Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz, director Mandy Stein, and Jes ... More >>

Interview: Thursday Frontman Geoff Rickly

"We always just wanted to be Fugazi, but people saw us otherwise." Thursday: Geoff Rickly is the one in the middle It's been almost a decade since Thursday released their breakout record Full Collapse, the album that launched the "post-hardcore" band into a major label contract with Island Records ... More >>

Matt and Kim on Touring With Cut Copy, Those Whopping $31.80 Tickets

photo by Tod Seelie Matt and Kim came up playing lofts, warehouse, galleries, basements--and still do locally whenever the circumstances permit, though their ever-increasing popularity makes it impossible to throw down at, say, Dead Herring without murdering its show potential forever. So even whe ... More >>

Vivian Girls and Awesome Color at Cake Shop

10 Questions for Katy Perry, Who Is Definitely Not, Like, Strung Out and Doing Centerfolds

GET PUNK’D

Where loud and fast still rules

Status Ain't Hood's Greatest Hits

Cursive at the Mercury Lounge Tonight

Grow Up Like a Rock Star

LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy sheds his cool and unites the Guitar Hero III–addled masses

Status Ain't Hood's Favorite Live Shows of 2007

Williamsburg Dances Barefoot

Matt & Kim? Against Me? Patti Smith christens the Music Hall anyway.

Provincializm: Ben Lee Covers Against Me, Etc.

Why You Can't Hear Against Me's Masterpiece

Live: Mastodon and Against Me, the Underground Rock Tour of the Year

Kids Arise!

Punk's ever-expanding perimeter encompasses two protest bands