The Beach Boys

Hunky Dory Glams Up the Musical

Drowners and Sweet Baboo: Epic Pop From the Suspiciously Welsh

Contrary to what some poor, misguided souls might have lead you to believe, it's not all hilarity and high jinks being a music hack. Endless deadlines, over zealous PR people, petulant musicians, and the daily grind of trying to summon up a vague resemblance of enthusiasm for the endless barrage of ... More >>

The Ten Best Concerts in New York This Week, 1/28/13

Here are the ten best concerts to check out around the city this week, in no particular order.

We All Hate Obama -- Hank Williams, Jr., Just Had to Remind Us

After today's news that Paul Ryan is a huge Rage Against the Machine fan, we are continuing into the weird vortex of politics and music. And what a strange place it always tends to be.Yesterday was the Iowa State Fair and, headlining the Midwestern fun of the Buckeye State, Hank Williams, Jr., was o ... More >>

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 >>

Download: Bright Moments' Yacht Rock Gone Gypsy Punk Anthem "Tourists"

True to its name, Bright Moments is a big sunshiny explosion of optimism: joyous found sounds, Afro-Brazilian rhythms, Beach Boys harmonies, anime keyboards and big explosions of billowing brass. It's the demented brainchild of New Yorker Kelly Pratt, a multi-instrumentalist who's played horns for B ... More >>

Live-Blogging The 2012 Grammys: Tributes, Tribulations, Skrillex, And The Return Of Adele

via Cats Who Look Like SkrillexWill this cat win Best New Artist?​Welcome to Sound of the City's liveblog of the 54th Annual Grammys, coming to you live from a couch in Astoria. There are quite a few questions lurking around tonight's ceremony. Will Adele sweep the three major categories in wh ... More >>

Brian Wilson: "I'm Not Really Interested" In Reuniting The Beach Boys

​ Brian Wilson's interview with the Voice's Stacey Anderson will appear in our June 8 issue, just in time for his sold-out residency at Highline Ballroom June 11-13. During the shows, the reclusive genius will perform last year's album of George Gershwin standards, Brian Wilson Reimagines Gers ... More >>

Four Bands Carrying On The Ramones' Legacy In 2011

Joey Ramone would have been 60 years old on May 19. This week, in celebration of the birthday of the Queens-born gone-too-soon punk legend, Sound of the City will run a series of features on his life and his legacy. ​The Ramones may have shouted their last four-count 15 years ago, but whether ... More >>

Live: Fleet Foxes Captivate The Crowd At United Palace

Fleet Foxes United Palace Theater Wednesday, May 18 Better than: Staying home and listening to Simon & Garfunkel records. Fleet Foxes' pastoral folk can strike some modern listeners as old-fashioned and derivative. But Wednesday's sold-out performance at the United Palace Theater was a vivid rem ... More >>

Tomorrow: 10 Fast Food Offerings That Don't Suck

​Sure, Wendy's chili is totally acceptable, and maybe even good, but is that enough to catapult it into the top 10? Picture this: You're in a car on the outskirts of Intercourse, Pennsylvania, clutching your well-thumbed antique copy of Road Food by Jane and Michael Stern. Where it says there ... More >>

LIKE THEM APPLES?

Dreamy, silly, and real rock takes to the pier

The Retro Rebellion of She & Him

Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward offer more sweet optimism—and why not?

Heather Eats Too Much, and We Get a Food History Lesson

​For a college course called Eng 444: Psychedelic Studies, someone named Heather was assigned what might have been a mundane multi-media project. Instead, she created a lively food tour of the American 1960's, year by year, each year represented by a food product that was introduced in that ye ... More >>

The New York City Record Store Year-End Roundup

​In 2009, we began the weekly Local Top 10, a series we hoped would prove that New Yorkers were far too stubborn to let the record store go. The series ran until last month, when we literally ran out of stores to cover--not the best sign for the future of music retailing in New York City. Befo ... More >>

Live: Neon Indian Do "Christmas In July" In Reverse At Mercury Lounge

Mr. Palomo, elsewhere. CREDIT​Neon Indian/MNDR/Toro y Moi Mercury Lounge Tuesday, December 15 "Play that Pitchfork song, man!" hoots some dude in the crowd semi-derisively -- yeah, it's gonna be that kind of show. The gentleman is referring, one supposes, to the Top 100 Tracks of 100, and Ne ... More >>

CMJ: Beach And/Or Campfire (Or Both) Vibes Abound At The Group Tightener Showcase

​ Jolene Kao"Coast" is the new "Wolf": Best Coast (above) and Coasting (below)​ Group Tightener Showcase Monster Island Wednesday, October 21 Monster Island's basement couldn't have been more perfect for last night's Todd P/Group Tightener party. High ceilings and sparkly, stone-layere ... More >>

Torche+Harvey Milk+Pollution

Live: Vivian Girls and Bones Royal play Kidrockers

Cadillac Records Turns the Label's History into Another Downer Soap Opera

THAT LUCKY OLE SUN SHINES ON

A new morning dawns for Brian Wilson

East Village Radio Music Festival: It's Hard Out There for a Pirate

Fuck a Blog: Super Furry Animals

Broken Social Scene

Charting the permutations of avant-something NYC rock with Social Registry

Status Ain't Hood Interviews Q-Tip

Bittering the Sweet, Reveling in the Surreal

Trippy Welsh dudes go pop, worship glam royalty

About This Garbage Greatest-Hits Album...

Interpol's Our Love to Admire

Gorgeous, menacing nursery rhymes for insincere clubbers

The Sound of Summer

Emperor reigns. J Mascis rocks. And Panda Bear goes all California.

Odes to Mother Earth

Ripping off the planet without clearing the samples

Colonial Williamsburg Tastes Meet NYC Williamsburg Sensibilities

Hedda On

The Beach Boys rock Ibsen's world in this very modern production

Open-Road Rock Nostalgia Goes Awkwardly Disco

The Hordes of Flatbush

A great slew of genre-bending goulash-rockers gracefully emerge from Brooklyn's hipster dust

Hot Spot

Music

Breath Fed

Mom conceives new uses for her lungs, mouth, and throat

Master essayist Geoffrey O'Brien tunes in to Radio Nabokov

Carry Your Torch

By the time they make Albuquerque, she'll be modeling

A Mouse of a Voice, Hiding in a Hole in the Bedroom Wall

Rock Singer Woos Melody

Girl, I Want to Take You to a Sidebar, a Sidebar, a Sidebar

From Ear to Eternity

Goebbels's Aural Pleasures; Transmissions Projects' Artic Visions

Big With the Kids

Corporate Rock-Hack Bands Nobody Over 20 Ever Heard of Rule America

A Very Good Year

Riot Lit

She's Not There (Not Anymore, Anyway)

Music

Eric Weisbard

E-Mail at the End of Time

Mambos in Bottles, Pit Bulls in Skirts, Smurfs in Stretch Hummers

Wayne Check