Bad Religion – The Dissent of Man (Epitaph, 2010)
Thirty years ago Bad Religion hit upon an almost mathematical formula for intelligent, melodic hardcore whose permutations have far exceeded expectations.
Superchunk – Majesty Shredding (Merge, 2010)
It’s not only comeback of the year, it’s album-title-as-perfect-description of the year.
Graham Parker – Struck By Lightning (BMG, 1991)
How may tightly-arranged, densely-written albums does GP have in his catalog that no one outside his fanatic fanbase is even aware of? Plenty.
Cyanide Pills – S/T (Damaged Goods, 2010)
British Retro-punk that never sounds precious or contrived.
John Moreland & the Black Gold Band – Things I Can’t Control (self-release, 2010)
Country-punk too good to need to try to prove itself on either side of the hyphen.
Bruce Springsteen – Darkness on the Edge of Town (CBS, 1978)
Springsteen’s pattern of following up the more commercial, more bombastic album with a more difficult, more restrained one just might be his greatest strength
You know where to go…
D Generation – No Lunch (Columbia, 1996)
Jesse Malin & co.‘s great gutter-pop-punk masterpiece.
Dreadnoughts – Polka’s Not Dead (Stomp Records, 2010)
Shit-kicking hybrid that might sound like The Dropkick Murphys meet Gogol Bordello but whose roots go way deeper than that.
Art Bergmann – S/T (1991, Polygram)
Art’s a fuckin’ genius.
Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson (Random House 2008)
Sure the whiff of trashy pot-boiler about the plot and all that talk of the author’s giant advance turned me away but that awkward-but-intriguing first sentence (“Accidents ambush the unsuspecting,often violently, like love”) ended up hooking me in.
