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Cleveland-born, Brooklyn-based rapper Kid Cudi’s turn toward arty rock sounds with WZRD, his mostly two-man collaboration with long-time friend and producer Dot da Genius, isn’t nearly as surprising as some in the hip-hop world are claiming: Following his impressive 2009 debut with the single “Day ’

Even us apostates who’ve never been able to overcome the obstacles of all that pointless whistling, the precious pizzicato violin-plucking, the obfuscatory nature of the Thesaurus-mining lyrics and the penchant toward arcane and twee sounds such as Tin Pan Alley pop, stodgy 1920s jazz, Kurt Weill ca

Together with Kurt Cobain and Mark Arm of Mudhoney, the Screaming Trees’ Mark Lanegan was one of the three great male singers of the alternative-rock era, perhaps the best of them, but certainly the one who’s given us the most varied settings for his remarkable whiskey-coated, sand-blasted instrumen

Always an extremely catholic artist in every sense of that word, like many Americans, Bruce Springsteen is becoming increasingly religious as he grows older.

Wanna push this blogger’s buttons? A surefire winner always is the mix of indelible melodies with chaotic guitar noise, whatever the context and other elements at work.

As a skeptic even when Van Halen was in its hair-metal heyday more than three decades ago—spandex, sophomoric double entendres and hammer-on’s just never did much for me—it’s hard to share in the enthusiasm of critics and fans trumpeting that “Van Halen finally is back to being Van Halen” on its 12t

On this week's Global Notes, Jerome and Tony Sarabia listen to cuts from Brazilian artist Gal Costa's latest labum, Recanto. A veteran of Brazil's Tropicalismo music scene, Costa records songs in Portuguese, Spanish and English.