Archive: 2025

 RUSH Co-Founders Geddy Lee [bass, keys, vocals] and Alex Lifeson [guitar, vocals] have announced their return to the stage for a very special 2026 headline tour, Fifty Something, in celebration of RUSH’s music, legacy, and the life of late drummer and lyricist Neil Peart. It notably marks the first time Lee and Lifeson have toured together in eleven years since the finale of RUSH’s R40 Tour […]

Jackson Hill is a 23-year-old DIY multi-instrumentalist currently based in Los Angeles, California. Through his releases, he blends the influences and ethos of the indie, slacker, and alternative rock scenes, whether through jangly guitar or naive lo-fi aesthetics. The artist’s self-titled LP is now available everywhere.  “Parking Lot” is an emotional, slow-burning highlight from Hill’s […]

Since 2017, Pop Pop Vernac has consistently delivered brief, punchy blasts of art-punk fervour. The prolific band of four plays musical chairs with devil-may-care musicianship, frequently trading off singing, playing, and songwriting duties. Come for the grunge punk loudness – get hooked by rapid-fire ripostes of head-spinning, poetic pop melodies. The band’s new project, A […]

As a bit of a belated birthday tribute to the late great Marc Bolan (who would have turned 78 years old this past September 30th), this week we’ll be spotlighting some prime cuts from his legendary career. For today’s Manic Monday offering, we’re showcasing this sizzling performance of “Buick Mackane” live from 1973 when he […]

On The Map is where we highlight famous, and not as well-known, musical sites that you can visit. This month we check into the epicenter of Austin, Texas blues: Antone’s. Let’s explore! THE SITE Fifty years ago, a man named Clifford Antone opened a small blues club in a somewhat derelict part of Austin, Texas, […]

Jon Tyler Wiley is a seasoned touring/session musician who has performed with a diverse range of acts such as Sister Hazel, Stephen Kellogg, and Ron Holloway. As a performing teaching instructor with the MusiCorps program, he has performed on stages such as the Grand Ole Opry, the Kennedy Center, and PBS’s “A Capitol Fourth” with […]

In June 2024, Goose performed what was, at the time, their biggest headlining show to date in front of approximately 14,000 attendees at the Mann Center in Philadelphia. However, considering the group’s (continuing) skyrocketing popularity, it’s no surprise that the band’s tour itinerary now features regular stops at equally massive, if not bigger, sheds throughout the country.  […]

The curtain rises not on a stage, but on an empty slate—a bare, gently curved floor backed by a massive, seemingly uninterrupted video screen, giving the immediate impression that David Byrne’s Who Is The Sky? Tour is less a rock concert and more a carefully orchestrated piece of immersive theatre. Having established a new standard for touring […]

October is officially underway, and the air is already starting to crystallize with the brisk breezes of Autumn. Just like an old car, we need to keep the machines at the Old Caustic Factory turning to keep the engines alive. Thankfully, we have a plethora of new music for our machines to sift through and […]

A half-century of perspective on The Who By Numbers (released 10/3/75) reveals not only how durable the album is, but also how it remains so enduring in spite of itself. The stripped-down production by Glyn Johns is bereft of the innovative synthesizer work of 1971’s Who’s Next and the density of arrangements on Quadrophenia from […]

He may have burst on the scene in the late ‘80s via Living Colour and that awesome “Cult of Personality” riff, but guitarist Vernon Reid has gone on to participate in a variety of projects from a head-spinning number of genres from jazz to electronic. Reid is back with a new solo album, Hoodoo Telemetry, […]

Pesky Kid is a multimedia artist who has dabbled in a variety of things, currently hoping to unleash “beats for self-actualization.” A product of the DIY world, Benjamin Champagne ran a small club for over 5 years and helped produce hundreds of shows. In that space, he cultivated art shows, workshops, resistance lectures, law briefings, […]

BLD DRV (blood drive) is the collaborative alt-rock project of Craig Daitch (vocals/guitar) of Detroit and Tacoma-based Justin Tamminga (drums) of the Spartan Records band Assertion. Working across time zones, the duo crafts a sound that blends textured guitars with brooding atmospherics through music that is both reflective and unflinching.  On their new single, “Vines,” […]

Metal music has always been crafted to hit you directly in the chest, with a perfectly aligned chord that pierces through the speakers and sticks to the bottled-up aggression most people carry with them. Like the finishing move in a fighting game, there is a violent, celebratory poetry that cuts through the stereotypical wall of […]

The idea of a consensus amongst a large group of people feels more like a fantasy than something we’ll ever see in person. Even outside of the phony socio-political arguments that flood your social media feed every time you decide to check an app, the large-scale music distribution platform that is the internet may be […]

When the country music Hall of Famer Waylon Jennings passed away in 2002, the artist left behind a host of recordings that had never been released. His son, famed musician/producer Shooter Jennings, recently discovered these and was amazed by the high quality and sheer number of top-notch offerings. Songbird is the first of a scheduled […]

You can call them Bags, The Bags, Alice Bag Band, or simply call them exactly what they are, one of the pioneering bands of the Southern California punk movement. The band was founded in 1977 by Alicia Armendariz and Patricia Morrison, who initially formed their own band, Femme Fatale, before teaming up with Kim Fowley […]

When A Perfect Circle released Mer de Noms in 2000, the band immediately stood apart from the crowded rock landscape of the era. Formed by guitarist Billy Howerdel, with Maynard James Keenan stepping outside of his role in Tool to provide vocals, the group fused heavy riffs with atmosphere and restraint in a way that […]

For her third album, Nashville-based Kashena Sampson pivots away from her more traditional folk-leaning roots toward a moodier, psychedelic folk-rock sound that gives her music a darker edge and continues to add to her appeal. You can hear influences as varied as Kate Bush, Siouxsie Sioux, and Tori Amos woven throughout the nine tracks that […]