Back when the Clean were embarking on their “Getaway” reunion tour, Hamish told me that the band felt far less kinship with the late-’70s/early-’80s punk scene than many might have believed. “We identified with punk but the Clean, I think right from the start, had a pop element. It was also a reaction against what was going on in New Zealand — there was a pretty violent punk and post-punk scene, with skinheads and all of that stuff. We definitely worked against that. We created music we felt had an energy to it but that was also very positive.”
David points to his brother’s elemental drumming style as intrinsic to the group’s enduring appeal: “It’s the way Hamish beats his drums. I think the Clean are a primitive band — there’s something very caveman about us or something, when we play live anyway.” Here he pauses. “But I think we just excited people. No one was really writing original music at the time, I suppose, and we showed some people that you could do it — that you could write okay music and make records.”
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Identity crisis, Spouting the Seacoast, Flaming out, More 
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Black Kids lead singer Reggie Youngblood is relaxed and focused, articulate and unpretentious, polite with a sharp sense of humor.
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The region’s newest emerging music scene isn’t Portland, but Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where license plates read, “Live Free or Die.”
- Flaming out
Elvis Costello’s My Flame Burns Blue (Deutsche Grammophon) disappoints me. I don’t mean critically as much as personally.
- Choir boy
Former Dismemberment Plan frontman Travis Morrison has a new album, and though he says it’s not a solo disc, you’d be forgiven for thinking so.
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Canadian singer Feist’s third solo album is a soundtrack for watching your lover walk out the door.
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The big story in heavy music right now is mammal metal, a blood-and-guts strain of post-thrash brutality lorded over at the moment by Lamb of God and Mastodon, two loud-and-proud Southern bands with new major-label discs out.
- Blood, felt, and rock and roll
What do you get when you cram two wizards, a dozen sock puppets, and several not-so-grown-up adults into a van for two weeks? Would you believe 12 videos, a dozen songs, and the year’s most unforgettable tour diary?
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You might not be able to tell from the glazed psych-pop glimmer of We’re Already There , Mazarin’s new disc for the NYC indie I and Ear, but singer/guitarist Quentin Stoltzfus counts old-time gospel and country among his favorite and earliest influences.
- Hot summer nights
The annual Sound Session festival is a weeklong sonic soiree that is expected to draw upwards of 65,000 partygoers from July 6 through 12.
- Take it to the bank
There are some simple and harsh realities about being a local musician in Maine.
- Clever, clever
You’ve got to have at least some affection for a young local band smart enough to reference Archilochus.
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Music Features
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, Entertainment, Music, Pop and Rock Music, Concerts and Tour Dates, Alternative and Indie Rock, David Kilgour, Robert Scott, Yo La Tengo, Less
