Alternative
This section covers album stories, birthdays, and anniversaries from artists across alternative and indie rock, plus notes on vinyl reissues as they come out. Alternative music grew up alongside independent labels, and many of its defining albums were pressed in comparatively modest runs the first time around, which is part of why later represses and anniversary editions get treated as real events rather than routine catalog work. Expect stories about how records were actually made — home studios, small budgets, unlikely breaks — and context on the pressings collectors look for when a favorite title finally returns to vinyl.
254 STORIES
Roy Wood: The Man Who Quit His Own Revolution
Roy Wood co-founded the Electric Light Orchestra and then walked away from it. He chose chaotic glam rock over the stadium success his former bandmate Jeff Lynne would achieve.
· 6 min read
Arca's XXXXX: XL Recordings as Object, Stream, and Ritual
Arca announces her first solo album in five years with a live broadcast across seven Barcelona locations. The 16-track XXXXX arrives July 31, 2026, on XL Recordings.
· 5 min read
How a £4,000 Punk Shop Taught the Majors to Listen
Geoff Travis spent £4,000 to open a record shop in 1976. By 1983 it had become the label that launched The Smiths and rewired the relationship between art and commerce.
· 6 min read
The Forgotten Festival Before Woodstock
The August sun hammered down on the Atlantic City Race Track as the first chords rang out across the grandstand. It was August 1, 1969, and the Atlantic City Po…
· 5 min read
The Face of Roots: Max Cavalera's Global Metal Manifesto
Max Cavalera turned the cover of Sepultura's 1996 album 'Roots' into a global symbol. Its story starts with a child collecting folk instruments across Brazil.
· 4 min read
The Guitarist Who Stole a Synth-Pop Band
A Fender Stratocaster drenched in chorus and delay, echoing through a Roland JC-120 — that shimmering, crystalline sound defined a global smash, yet its creator…
· 5 min read
Mac DeMarco's Tascam 244 and the Cassette Aesthetic
A Tascam 244 cassette recorder sits in a Vancouver bedroom, its tape heads capturing guitar jangle and off-key vocals that would soon define a generation of lo-…
· 5 min read
The 8-String Wall: Stephen Carpenter's Deftones Legacy
Stephen Carpenter built Deftones' signature sound on seven- and eight-string guitars. His low F# riffs became the textural foundation of alternative metal.
· 5 min read
The First Black Hippie’s Last Stand: Arthur Lee
Arthur Lee died in 2006 at 61, leaving behind 'Forever Changes' — a 1967 album that failed commercially but became one of rock’s most venerated artifacts.
· 6 min read
76 Points and a Bedroom: Clairo’s Immunity at 7
Clairo’s debut album Immunity arrived on August 2, 2019, co-produced by Rostam Batmanglij. Seven years later, it still feels suspended between bedroom pop intimacy and a sharper, stranger light.
· 4 min read
The Suburbs: Arcade Fire's Letter from the Edge of Town
Sixteen years ago this week, Arcade Fire released The Suburbs. The sprawling third album turned the quiet desperation of a cul-de-sac into a chart-topping, Grammy-winning phenomenon.
· 5 min read
The Leather Jacket That Built a Catalog
In August 1960, five Liverpudlians drove into Hamburg for a residency at a strip club — and emerged as the band that would become The Beatles.
· 5 min read
Boz Burrell’s Bass Began as a Crash Course in Crimson
A Fender Precision Bass, a request from Robert Fripp, and a man who had never played the instrument before. That was the starting point for Boz Burrell’s unlike…
· 5 min read
How a Backstage Walkout Made Siouxsie and the Banshees Go Synth
Two musicians vanish without warning. A band is left staring at a stage they’re supposed to command in hours, with no guitarist and no drummer. That kind of sho…
· 5 min read
Tommy Bolin: The Fender, the Echoplex, and the Legend
The wah-wah pedal wails, the Echoplex trails a ghost note into the void, and a Fender Stratocaster screams through a fuzz box in a Miami hotel room. It is the s…
· 5 min read
The Shaking Leg That Launched Rock and Roll
On July 30, 1954, a 19-year-old Elvis Presley took the stage at Memphis's Overton Park Shell. His spontaneous shaking leg launched the physical vocabulary of rock and roll.
· 5 min read
Springsteen's E Street Band Returns After 18 Years
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band ended an 18-year studio silence with The Rising. The July 2002 album turned the grief of 9/11 into a collective act of mourning and resilience.
· 5 min read
Korn’s Untitled: No Name, No Head, No Rules
Korn’s eighth album, Untitled, arrived on July 31, 2007. It was a radical reinvention that replaced downtuned aggression with bagpipes, a children’s choir, and a pop producer.
· 5 min read
The Knife, the Slide, and the Echo of Daniel Ash
A single chord, stretched into a nine-minute abyss of echo and silence, can change the course of a genre. That is precisely what happened when Daniel Ash, the g…
· 5 min read
Fatboy Slim: From Housemartins Bass to Big Beat
Norman Cook spent a decade moving from Housemartins bassist to Fatboy Slim. The alias turned cut-and-paste sample chaos into the defining sound of big beat and 12-inch culture.
· 5 min read
Bill Berry: The Farmer Who Wrote 'Man on the Moon'
Bill Berry, the left-handed drummer who powered R.E.M. from a crumbling Athens church to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, was born on July 31, 1958.
· 5 min read
Arcade Fire's Cereal Box Satire: Everything Now at 9
A box of branded cereal sat on a merch table, a fake product from a fake corporation, and it was the most honest thing about the entire campaign. Nine years ago…
· 5 min read
When Be-Bop-A-Lula Beat the Black-and-White Odds on Live TV
On July 28, 1956, Gene Vincent detonated "Be-Bop-A-Lula" on The Perry Como Show. The raw 45 rpm single tore out of jukeboxes and into America's most respectable variety hour.
· 4 min read
The Stage After Silence: Alice in Chains’ Unplugged
Two and a half years of silence ended with a trash can backstage and a pair of sunglasses. When Alice in Chains walked onto the candlelit set of MTV Unplugged o…
· 4 min read