The Curmudgeon Rock Report

In which The Curmudgeons share their reverence for one of modern indie rock's most singular and iconoclastic talents. Kurt Vile has worked hard from his native Philadelphia for nearly 20 years now to build for himself an idiosyncratic, shamanistic style that melds folk, psychedelic, classic rock and pure pop into something wholly his own. As Curmudgeon Arturo Andrade puts it, "Imagine Lou Reed and...

In which The Curmudgeons revisit the year before grunge exploded into the mainstream. And 1990 was indeed a really important year for the development of our beloved genre. Mother Love Bone was on the cusp of hitting it big until frontman Andrew Wood, a beloved figures in the Seattle scene, died of a heroin overdose. The band's album Apple, in the can but not yet released, was effectively tanked by...

In which The Curmudgeons express deep appreciation for how Kendrick Lamar both honors and respects hip-hop as an artform and continues to move it forward--even as the rest of modern hip-hop stagnates, suffers and embarrasses. We cover the span of his entire career and analyze each of his official album releases musically and artistically. This includes discussion two absolutely staggering achievem...

In which the Curmudgeons express awe and amazement over the musical innovation and rebellious spirit of one Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti. Already an established jazz-fusion bandleader in his native Nigeria, a nearly year long stay in Los Angeles in 1969 exposed Kuti to the thrilling sounds of that era's soul and funk music and to the rage and purpose behind the politics of Black empowerment. Kuti returned...

In which the Curmudgeons meditate on the year in which grunge as a movement officially entered the universal rock consciousness. The Seattle rock scene in the mid-to-late 1980s was defined by a bunch of smart, ambitious wiseasses who were in a virtual competition with one another to find the truest sweet spot between punk and metal. However, it was not until the band Mudhoney found an enthusiastic...

In which the Curmudgeons revisit and marvel over one of the most amazing streaks a performer has ever had in the long history of this thing we love called rock 'n' roll. Belfast native Van Morrison enjoyed chart success early on in the mid-1960s with the hits "Gloria" and "Brown Eyed Girl" but then fell back into obscurity for a couple years before re-emerging with a mixture of bravado, introspect...

In which The Curmudgeons explore the work of the worst rock band of the 21st Century...so you don't have to do all the work yourself! Seriously, this is a public service we're doing here. Greta Van Fleet is a quartet from a small town in Michigan that did an admittedly great job of studying the style, technique and sound of the mighty Led Zeppelin. But then they mistook that for creative juice and...

In which The Curmudgeons set the dial back to 1988, when grunge started to become a real thing with real buzz and found itself no longer contained to just Seattle. Mudhoney kicked ass and triumphed in the U.K. with the gargantuan single "Touch Me I'm Sick" and their awesomely heavy debut EP Superfuzz Bigmuff. Soundgarden released its full-length debut album, which, while badly produced, found the...

In which The Curmudgeons introduce you--again--to your new favorite band. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club spliced the neo-psychedelic swagger of bands like The Brian Jonestown Massacre with the rawkin' menace of the Stone Roses, Oasis and other British bands to offer a maximal yet poignant vision of what rock 'n' roll should be. Their five-album output during the first decade of the 21st century is on...

In which The Curmudgeons show love for artists that are, well, falling out love. A great break-up album takes the listener on a journey through the complicated layers of our humanity and our very souls: Love, anger, betrayal, heartbreak, grief, forgiveness, false hope, celebrations of new love, reservations about getting back in the game and healing. The albums on our list all take us to these del...

In which The Curmudgeons revisit the goofy yet ambitious and thrillingly original dawn of grunge music. Unbeknownst to some, the story of what became the dominant mainstream brand of rock 'n' roll in the 1990s dates back to 1984, back when the Seattle area was cold, rainy, gloomy and also a sleepy outpost that was surprisingly actually skipped by major artists of the time. So what you do you when...

In which the Curmudgeons celebrated the 1970s output of one of soul music's loveliest and most powerful voices. Yes, Al Green could sing his ass off. His falsetto may be one of the most mimicked in all of popular music. But there was a depth to Reverend Al that stops us both in our tracks. His expressions of making up, breaking up, loneliness, fearless masculinity, spiritual vulnerability and pure...

In which the Curmudgeons go way back--all the way back to 1960 for starters--to celebrate the sounds, the innovations and the incredible legacy of the musicians--and the labels--that created and performed Memphis's soul music. Stax/Volt, as the production house was known as, originated as a source for a kind of counterprogramming to what Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and others were launching into cu...

In which The Curmudgeons out-list all of the other lists and show you the way to the REAL best albums that hit shelves in this grand year of 2025. Christopher O'Connor's list leans heavily toward power-pop and indie rock and features Geese's incredible Getting Killed as his number one album of the year. Arturo Andrade's own list veers generally in a weirder, more experimental direction, though he...

In which The Curmudgeons take a gigantic, cathartic dumpola on one of the worst bands of the late 1990s and early 2000s, namely the insufferable post-grunge Christian rock quartet Creed. We'll give the band credit for one thing: They proved there was still a market for grunge well after the luster of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and other bands had faded. But, see, that was the problem. Creed could do a...

In which The Curmudgeons pay homage to one of the most storied--and notorious-indie-rock bands of their era. Starting in 1995, the Brian Jones Massacre unleashed a brand of retro-futuristic trance-rock that expanded the possibilities of the rock idiom. The band, led by enigmatic and perhaps troubled frontman Anton Newcombe, initially dabbled in the shoegazer genre defined by bands like My Bloody V...

In which The Curmudgeons take a chance, take a chance, take a chance on ABBA, one of the most endearing pop bands of its era. This Swedish quartet has taken its lumps from critics and snarky scenesters over the years, being labeled cheesy, or inauthentic, or too corny to be taken seriously. We think all of that flak nonsense. We love this band, who lit up the universe with their charming, smile-in...

In which The Curmudgeons honor one of the fiercest--and most fiercely independent--rock bands of all time. Fugazi erupted from the Washington, D.C., punk scene in the late 1980s.  They fashioned a brand of passionate, politically charged post-hardcore music that deftly weaved two guitars with a dub reggae-inspired rhythm section. Beyond the music, the band was known for an uncompromising vision: t...

In which The Curmudgeons wrap up their five-part lookback at the British rock of the 1990s. It was a decade that started with the demised of dance-rock and shoegazer scenes but then saw an absolute cultural revolution explode in their wake via Britpop. By the end of the decade, though, things were dying down a bit and bubblegum pop acts like Robbie Williams and The Spice Girls. Yet there was quite...

In which The Curmudgeons lovingly recall the latter edge of the Britpop era, covering the years of 1996 and 1997. Britpop, at this point, had become a defining cultural phenomenon in the U.K., leaving music fans to wonder what might come next. Yet while Oasis attempted to follow the smashing, overwhelming success of its first two albums by going even bigger and grander, other bands veered toward s...

In which The Curmudgeons revisit the zenith of the Britpop movement. And by 1995, there definitely was a movement in the U.K. The music defined the style and defined the discussion and defined the culture. The mania was such that the two biggest bands in all of Britpop, Oasis and Blur, ended the year embroiled in a hilariously nasty feud. Here, we discuss albums by those two bands and others by Th...

In which The Curmudgeons continue catching a wave of Britpop and launch into the second part of our five-part series on the joys of the Britpop era. On this episode, we cover the eventful year of 1994, during which Britpop officially solidified as a thing and started its ascension toward the stratosphere. It was during 1994 that Oasis and Blur released seminal, awesome albums that effectively defi...

In which The Curmudgeons hop into the phone booth and travel back to the time when Britpop ruled the world during the heart of the 1990s. What was Britpop? Most specifically, it was a call to rock 'n' roll arms by a swath of young, hungry bands peeved at America's cultural imperialism of the era. The music swayed and blasted with confidence, and its pop structures were tight, tuneful--and, as a re...

In which The Curmudgeons continue their exploration of all the cool and revolutionary sounds blasting out of the City of Angels in the 1990s. By 1995, the music world had been grungified, making things safer, brighter and lovelier for not only hard-rock artists, but folks of the more soul-breaking, confessional variety. And that L.A. satisfied both ends of that spectrum between 1995 and 1999. Rage...

In which the Curmudgeons once again venture to the City of Angels to recapture all the great vibes generated during the 1990s. After a 1980s in which glam metal and punk scenes dominated, what came next for Los Angeles? Well, the trade winds blew in from the Pacific Northwest, and the influence of grunge made the music crunchier and louder, giving us bands like Tool and Weezer. Meanwhile, the long...