It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Brooklyn musician Kevin Devine is emerging as one of the greatest observational lyricists around today. He writes about what he sees and more often than not, he turns his keen analytical skills on himself. What separates Kevin from a great deal of his peers, however, is his adeptness with the pen, which he has been developing since grade school, building upon as a journalism major at college and strengthening as an extremely mobile touring musician over the past years. more ›

EIGHT TRACKS 'N EIGHT TRACKS: Oh wait, that was the predecessor to Tapes 'N Tapes, the band playing at Neumos tonight. Everybody loves a little celebratory Midwestern indie rock on Inauguration Day, right? To prepare, or if you can't make it to the show but still don't want to Miss It, check out this Lollapalooza feature from a year or two ago where you can download the tracks from their set-list. more ›

In the 11th grade, we busted our Mom's lava lamp playing soccer in the house. (Yeah, she had a lava lamp. Whatever.) Our seemed-like-a-good-idea solution was to vacuum the two quarts of red oily goo with the family's shiny new Electrolux. About a week later, an odd smell started emanating from the storage closet where the vacuum was kept and we were grounded for two weeks. On Day 9 of the Great Grounding, we had a chance to see Lollapalooza. We begged to get a reprieve. We pleaded. We begged some more. We succeeded. That night we rocked out with Les Claypool and then didn't bother coming home until noon the next day, when there were more groundings. more ›