Chris Dahlen

Last fall, Microsoft hyped its pricey Xbox 360 by promising to reinvent gaming as we know it. The blockbuster "next generation" titles were supposed to harness the machine's awesome power to deliver high-definition graphics and impossibly realistic action. But a funny thing happened on the way to the future. The...

The fans who love the Super Furries for their spasmodic mix of neon beats and jittery pop will be disappointed -- a second time, if you count Phantom Planet -- by Love Kraft's conventional midtempo ballads. The lyrics deliver strange puns and double-entendres ("kiss me with apoca-lips"), and the eerie...

OV is either a monolithic masterpiece or as numbing as five spin cycles in a washing machine. The bandmates of metalcore Orthrelm scale this 45-minute work like two guys fulfilling a dare, climbing from one repetitive section to the next. At one point they play one riff 126 times in...

As the hostess/proprietress of Radio Thrift Shop on WFMU-FM 91.1 in Hudson Valley, New York, and an accomplished singer in her own right, Laura Cantrell is a champion of old-time country music, and she makes it sound lovelier than ever on her Matador debut, Humming by the Flowered Vine. Her...

Whether it inspires you or just leaves you pummeled, Funeral is a staggering debut. Over the course of just one album, The Arcade Fire bursts out of the rigid beats and chopping chords of its postpunk influences and straight into arena-rock territory; lead singer Win Butler's raw-throated bombast has even...