#Year End List

AF 2017 IN REVIEWThe Best Live Shows of 2017

Austra @Warsaw This was my first show of 2017, unless you count sets by Janelle Monae, Alicia Keys, and Indigo Girls that dotted the Women’s March on Washington days prior. I may have been late to the game regarding Austra, a beloved Toronto band already two albums into their career, and it wasn’t...

Madison Bloom

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Staff Picks - Nicole OrtizAnniversary and Reunion Shows of 2016

This past year (for me, anyway) was full of attending various anniversary shows of bands I obsessed over in high school. It was nostalgic and exciting to see the bands I used to listen to nonstop perform my old favorites, songs I still listen to somedays when I'm riding my bike or underground on...

Nicole Ortiz

BEST OF 2015The Year In Lyrics

Words are pretty weird. One alone is easy to understand, almost impossible to misinterpret. But string a bunch of them together, and it gets more complicated (as well as beautiful, descriptive, romantic or hurtful). One line can make you remember a song forever, or dismiss it entirely. Out of all...

Emily Daly

BEST OF 2015Our Favorite Frontwomen

Lukas Keapproth/AMERICAN-STATESMAN 2015 was a great year for women in music. Specifically, for women who front a band as both a singer and guitarist. While we've reached a point where it's not totally necessary to point and shout every time we find an amazing band led by a female musician (it's...

Emily Daly

YEAR END LISTTop 10 Album Covers

Let's all just agree to agree that hip hop as a genre won the album cover contest this year, okay? Much of the new heavy metal out this year bore covers that ran the gambit between overstatedly woodsy to just plain inexplicable, and pop albums favored stark, angular glamor shots and occasionally...

Carena Liptak