Rocks like: The Starting Line, Jimmy Eat World, and River City High.
The Status on Myspace | Doghouse Records on Myspace | Buy it on Amazon

The Status has teamed up with indie powerhouse Doghouse Records to release their first full length album, entitled So This is Progress. Now out for a month, the album is starting to make waves and the band is wrapping up the final leg of a tour supporting Bayside, The Matches, and Valencia. With moments evoking Something to Write Home About… era Get Up Kids, vocal harmonies as solid as Midtown’s, and hooks reminiscent of The Starting Line, The Status is what I loved about emo when I was in high school in the late 90s.

Amidst the generic pop punk and emo of the past few years, this album easily stand out as one of the better ones released in the genre. At brief moments, the CD can sound a bit generic or a bit stale, but the overall product harkens back to a time when the emo scene was just starting to break into the mainstream with the success of Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity. …more… »

Rocks like: Simple Plan, Bowling for Soup, and Yellowcard.
Buy TBL Merch on MerchNow | Band on Myspace | The Bigger Lights on PureVolume

First things first… Fiction Fever is a generic pop punk EP, no quips about it… but this band reeks of TRL Top 40 fame, in a good way. Like some bands that I am often too quick to dismiss in this genre (Good Charlotte, Bowling for Soup, and Simple Pan), these kids are a tight unit that doesn’t miss a beat. Production quality, palatable sound, and the right look are all essential ingredients to marketing this type of music to the masses. The Bigger Lights possess all of these ingredients in abundance.

Much of my distaste for what I call “generic pop punk” is strictly elitism. I was a pop punk loving teeny bopper not too long ago, so why should I look down on others for being so. Did I or did I not grow up going to see Jersey staples like Midtown and The Youth Ahead? Did I or did I not spend my summers at Warped Tour and Blink 182 concerts? Who am I to judge? In fact, am I simply a self-loathing closet pop punk fiend to this day? Quite possibly. …more… »

I’d like to extend a warm congratulations to Jim Ward and his alt-country crew, Sleepercar, as landing a gig opening up on a Coldplay tour is quite a big deal. Check out a great alternative act opening up for one of the biggest bands in the world in a city near you:

11/3 Auburn Hills, MI @ Palace Of Auburn Hills
11/5 Atlanta, GA @ Phillips Arena
11/6 Tallahassee, FL @ Club Downunder-FSU*
11/7 Orlando, FL @ Amway Arena
11/9 Sunrise, FL @ Bank Atlantic Center
11/11 Atlanta, GA @ Phillips Arena
11/12 Memphis, TN @ Hi Tone*
11/13 Kansas City, MO @ Sprint Center
11/14 St. Paul, MN @ Xcel Energy Center
11/16 Oklahoma City, OK @ Ford Center
11/17 Austin, TX @ Mohawks Outside Stage*
11/18 Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
11/19 Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
11/20 Albuquerque, NM @ The Agency*
11/21 Denver, CO @ Pepsi Center
11/22 Salt Lake City, UT @ Energy Solutions Arena
11/25 Anaheim, CA @ Honda Center
11/26 Glendale, AZ @ Jobbing.com Arena

NSN is touring the great U. S. of A. with hellogoodbye and Ace Enders. Check out my review of their EP here and check them out live at a city near you…

10/23 Pomona, CA @ Glass House
10/24 San Diego, CA @ Epicentre
10/25 Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress
10/27 Dallas, TX @ The Door
10/28 Austin, TX @ Emo’s Alternative Lounging
10/29 Houston, TX @ Java Jazz
10/31 Jacksonville, FL @ Fuel Coffeehouse
11/1 Fort Lauderdale, FL @ Culture Room
11/2 Orlando, FL @ The Social
11/4 Greensboro, NC @ Greene Street
11/6 New York, NY @ Blender Theatre at Gramercy
11/7 Baltimore, MD @ Sonar Club Stage
11/8 Farmingdale, NY @ The Crazy Donkey
11/9 Asbury Park, NJ @ Stone Pony
11/11 Cambridge, MA @ Middle East Restaurant & Nightclub
11/12 Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church - Sanctuary
11/13 Buffalo, NY @ Xtreme Wheels
11/14 Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop
11/15 Detroit, MI @ Magic Stick
11/16 Chicago, IL @ Metro
11/17 Omaha, NE @ Sokol Underground
11/18 Denver, CO @ Marquis Theatre
11/19 Salt Lake City, UT @ Club Sound
11/21 Seattle, WA @ El Corazon
11/23 Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theatre
11/25 San Francisco, CA @ Slim’s
11/26 Los Angeles, CA @ Knitting Factory Hollywood
11/30 Scottsdale, AZ @ Chyro Arts

Check back soon for an interview and I’ll work on trying to get them to give up a free download for our readers, too!

Rocks like: The Starting Line, Plain White T’s, and Panic! at the Disco.
Download EP on ITunes | NSN’s Official Merch Page | Last.FM Page for NSN

Appropriately named, Never Shout Never’s “The Yippee EP” is just another pop-punk CD on first listen. On the second listen, some of the more interesting beats and offbeats start to become apparent. By the third time through the 4 song EP, it becomes apparent that Never Shout Never is more like the earlier days of Drive Thru Records than the modern day major label pop-punk demigods.

Immediate comparisons can easily be drawn to the radio powerpop of Plain White T’s, the punk infused pop-rock of Panic! at the Disco, and even the emo stylings of Dashboard Confessional. Deeper comparisons to Unwritten Law, The Staring Line, and even the more eccentric Piebald, may be a bit more accurate. To be fair, 4 songs may not be enough to decipher which comparison are more accurate, but I can say that this upbeat EP is a sign of promise, at the very least. …more… »

Rocks like: Say Anything, The Get Up Kids, and Brand New
MANSIONS on Myspace | MANSIONS on Purevolume | Download EP on ITunes

Max Bemis molded a masterpiece of pain, sorrow, and resilience when he turned a nervous breakdown into …Is A Real Boy, the debut full-length for his now famous project known as Say Anything. Bemis’s heart-on-sleeve vulnerability is equaled only by his tongue-in-cheek bravado and Say anything has been able to set themselves apart as something special in the indie alternative scene. Having worked with Bemis and his band, it is no surprise that Doghouse Records has a knack for finding troubadours with both strong musical and strong lyrical sensibilities. Enter Christopher Browder and MANSIONS…

Like Bemis, Browder is a cocky, yet vulnerable songsmith willing to chomp right into the listener. In a mere four tracks, Browder sets himself apart as an artist worth much more than a brief listen and someone unwilling to release status quo music that can be pigeonholed into a single sound or genre. …more… »

Rocks like: The Promise Ring, Ryan Adams, and Wilco
Sleepercar on Myspace | Sleepercar.com | Download West Texas on ITunes

Only steers and queers come from Texas (at least that is what I was taught by Full Metal Jacket), but it seems that good independent label pop rock may also be attributed to the state where the Alamo and Nolan Ryan really mean something. West Texas, the debut release by Jim Ward’s newest indie rock outfit, displays a phenomenal mix many genres and elements.

Prior to listening to this album, my most recent experience with Jim Ward was his solo EP, Quiet. The EP was mundane and unimpressive, as far as I was concerned. I was on a kick where I reviewed music without doing any research into the band or any of the members in order to make a judgment on the music alone. This practice was brief and I returned to my typical business of researching the band before taking in the music. At that time, I listened to the Jim Ward EP and shrugged him off as a generic singer-songwriter that showed some hints of promise but never delivered. This go around, I read up on Ward and realized that he had indeed put out some great music in his past musical life as a member of the seminal post-punk outfit At the Drive In, so I figured giving him another shot would only be fair (as ATDI’s Relationship of Command is easily one of my top 10 albums of all-time). …more… »