After its late ’90s masterpieces Idaho band Built to Spill seems to have found a perfect balance between indie sensibility and mainstream listenability that has outlasted the band’s alternative peers such as Modest Mouse and Pavement.

Coming off a successful debut album can pose problems for a band. It’s sometimes difficult to come out of the shadow of that first record. Recording the follow-up album puts pressure on the band members to meet the expectations of their new fan base and to stay true to themselves musically.  This is the exact [...]

At face value, “Break Up” is another middling pop record from Pete Yorn’s growing catalog of blandness, he’s becoming an expert at predictability, there are a few stand out tracks and a few that seem to work better on paper. The silver lining to this is that the whole thing allows Scarlet Johansson’s raspy voice [...]