Email Author Roy Kasten

2010 Stories by Roy Kasten

• The Walkmen

  published October 13, 2010

  The Walkmen is arguably the most perplexing band of New York's early '00s indie-rock class. The promise of its two first records —... More >>

• Jason and the Scorchers

  published October 13, 2010

  Jason and the Scorchers didn't just fight on the frontlines of the roots-rock revolution of the '80s — the band all but invented... More >>

• Band of Horses

  published October 6, 2010

  Given the restless impulses of Band of Horses principal singer and songwriter Ben Bridwell, it's no wonder that any cease and desist... More >>

• Patty Larkin

  published October 6, 2010

  Once, musicians rerecorded their classic material as a way of sticking it to the record-label man who owned the tracks but never got around to... More >>

• 

  FEATURED STORY

  Review + Setlist: The National Glows Past the Gloom at the Pageant, Thursday, September 30

  published Oct 01, 2010

  Click here for more pics from The National.The National was in chatty mood at the Pageant, or perhaps baritone intoner Matt Berninger and brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner were just trying to fill th... More >>

• Drive-By Truckers

  published September 29, 2010

  Starting with 2001's Southern Rock Opera, Drive-By Truckers began a hellacious run of storytelling rock & roll that fiercely... More >>

• The National

  published September 29, 2010

  In the croaking voice of Matt Berninger and the towering sonic details of the National, the doomed Walter Mitty — with his... More >>

• Review: The Felice Brothers and Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three Break Through the Blues at the Old Rock House, Monday, September 20

  published Sep 21, 2010

  The Felice Brothers are a sound man's worst nightmare, and they don't even perform with banjos. At the Old Rock House on Monday night, the upstate New Yorkers pushed the limits of cacophony through th... More >>

• American Aquarium

  published September 22, 2010

  It's within the realm of possibility that American Aquarium wasn't thinking about the opening lines of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot when... More >>

• Samantha Crain

  published September 15, 2010

  Shawnee, Oklahoma, native Samantha Crain comes by her low-burning notoriety honestly. The diminutive songwriter eschews glamour and... More >>

• Blue Giant

  published September 15, 2010

  The psychedelic country pioneered by the Byrds and the Grateful Dead has been making a bit of a comeback, thanks to bands such as... More >>

• Hayes Carll

  published September 8, 2010

  Hayes Carll doesn't have the voice of Jimmie Dale Gilmore, the poetry of Townes Van Zandt or the blues of his mentor Ray Wylie Hubbard.... More >>

• Justin Townes Earle

  published September 8, 2010

  For every Hank Williams and Gram Parsons who never got clean there's a Carlene Carter and Steve Earle who kicked the junk and still kick the... More >>

• Balmorhea

  published September 1, 2010

  Balmorhea succeeds where Emerson, Lake and Palmer and the Moody Blues failed. That diseased dream of fusing two antithetical genres... More >>

• Sarah Jaffe

  published September 1, 2010

  Sarah Jaffe is a young protégé of Midlake, and on the strength of a single EP, she's earned superlative comparisons to... More >>

• Alejandro Escovedo, still rocking strong after all these years on Street Songs of Love

  published August 25, 2010

  Alejandro Escovedo sounds happy. And he should be: After nearly succumbing to Hepatitis C in 2003, the Austinite is touring steadily, writing... More >>

• The Harmed Brothers

  published August 25, 2010

  Maybe you've seen the photos from Washington Square in New York circa 1958 or so, with those fresh-faced college kids wailing out "Tom Dooley"... More >>

• Wye Oak

  published August 18, 2010

  Named for an ancient, mammoth, lightning-wrecked oak tree in Maryland, Wye Oak should be the envy of every indie-rock band that sank its... More >>

• Chicago Afrobeat Project

  published August 18, 2010

  The next time you encounter a critic who uses the word "Afrobeat" in proximity with an indie-rock band that may have listened to Remain in... More >>

• Review + Setlist: Jackson Browne and David Lindley Harmonize at the Fox Theatre, Tuesday, August 10

  published Aug 11, 2010

  Jackson Browne's rare US tour with David Lindley -- the all-things-stringed maestro who, as much as anyone, defined the sound of Browne's astonishing run of records in the '70s -- found the sextaganar... More >>

• David Dondero

  published August 11, 2010

  In the Jonathan Richman school of rock & roll amateurism, David Dondero sits in the back of the class playing Boggle, sketching... More >>

• Elizabeth Cook

  published August 11, 2010

  Too quirky for conventional country radio, too traditional for country punks and too glamorous for country folkies, Elizabeth Cook will... More >>

• Review: Bettye LaVette Pours Out the British Rock Soul at the Old Rock House, Friday, August 6

  published Aug 07, 2010

  The greatest living interpretive singer last appeared in St. Louis at the Sheldon Concert Hall in September 2009, on an evening that found her before a rapt and packed house, basking in a recent Gram... More >>

• Jackson Browne/David Lindley

  published August 4, 2010

  Chalk up Jackson Browne's precipitous artistic decline to political obsessions, cocaine hangovers or just a bad case of the '80s. But... More >>

• Bettye Lavette

  published August 4, 2010

  Great singers in jazz, blues and soul have regularly taken on the Great American Songbook — but then again, so has Rod Stewart. So... More >>