Why Record Stores Are the Greatest One-Night Stands Ever!

SPIN's Charles Aaron celebrates Record Store Day with a personal essay about learning to discover -- and love -- music.
R.I.P. Pier Platters in Hoboken, NJ

Dead Weather Play Their First Live Show

REVIEW & PHOTOS: SPIN's Charles Aaron on Jack White's badass new band with the Kills' Alison Mosshart and others.
Allison Mosshart and Dean Fertita / Photo by Eric Nowels

If your beef with today's crop of rock bands is that they're sexless, style-challenged dweebs who play their instruments like they're afraid to break a nail, then the Dead Weather certainly corrected that situation Tuesday night during their first-ever public show at a packed Bowery Ballroom on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Eminem's New Video: "Totally Bewildering"

SPIN's Charles Aaron riffs on Em's clip for "We Made You," and ponders its connection to… the Navy!?!
Eminem

The weirdest thing to me, so far, about Eminem's rather bewildering new single/video "We Made You" (an apparent effort to defibrillate "The Real Slim Shady") is that when I clicked over to watch it this morning on the blog of Em's manager, Paul Rosenberg, the first thing that popped up was an awkwardly comedic a

Anti-SXSW Party: Mess With Texas!

The Thermals, King Khan, and much more. SPIN's Charles Aaron weighs in on the best off-the-grid event in Austin.
Cursive's Tim Kasher / Photo by Christy Kurtz

For years, there have been Austin shadow parties and festivals in opposition to SXSW's corporate juggernaut -- the best, known affectionately as Fuck by Fuck You, booked local (and international) punk bands to squall and scream and spill beer all over the backyard of a venue called the "Typewriter Museum" (the 2009 event was redubbed Type by Type Writer).

Hot Leg, 'Red Light Fever' (Barbecue Rock)

A gleeful comeback from the snowy depths.

The Darkness' peacock-ish pop-metal frolic left frontman Justin Hawkins nose-down in a powdery trough by 2004, but here he tries to end a personal five-year slide on his new group's feisty debut.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 'It's Blitz!' (Interscope)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs show the hipsters how to feel for real.

You're a zero-ohh….No matter how breathily Karen O exhales, or how temptingly the synths drone and swell around her, it's a curious rallying cry. And as the opening track on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' third album unfolds, it's unclear whom she's addressing, where she's going, or what's gonna happen when she, or we, arrive. "Get your leather on" is the only real directive.

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