Led by Black Francis (AKA Charles Thompson), this Boston band reveled in the raw, loud energy of punk, but harnessed it in service of catchy melodies laced with bizarre lyrics. Their 1989 album, DOOLITTLE, is widely considered to be one of the best a…

In the early 1990s, Polly Jean Harvey's music was a bracing post-punk battle cry, staking out new territory for female alt-rock artists without resorting to didactic feminism. Over time, Harvey has grown more subtle and moody, embracing a more expans…

Inaugurators of the "lo-fi" alternative rock sound, Pavement set the course for college rock in the 1990s. Their skewed, shambolic guitar pop, slacker vocals, and dense wordplay endeared them to those disenchanted by lumpen grunge sounds. Over time, …

The Twilight Singers was the side-project Greg Dulli (b. 11 May 1965, Ohio, USA) turned to when his former band, the highly rated Afghan Whigs, ground to a halt in early 2001. During the course of their career, the Afghan Whigs had moved away from th…

Drawing equally from punk rock and new-music pioneers such as John Cage and Glenn Branca (whom guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo both played with), Sonic Youth employed a palette of white noise that deconstructed punk-rock orthodoxy into radi…

This Athens band's initial mix of Velvet Underground strum, Byrds-like Rickenbacker jangle, and charismatically oblique singing, became the sound of the 1980s as legions of bands followed suit. But even as imitators codified R.E.M.'s approach into th…

After leaving Dinosaur Jr. in 1989, guitarist/singer Lou Barlow pursued a more nuanced artistic direction in Sebadoh. Though the band's songwriting quality is variable, Barlow always puts his soul on the line with sometimes disturbing honesty. Sebado…

Beck Hansen, the quintessential California slacker, came up among the lo-fi ranks, pushing a blend of country blues, Dylan-inspired wordplay, punk, and hip-hop. His straight-out-of-the-gate 1994 smash, "Loser," made him a star seemingly overnight. Su…

Radiohead burst onto the Britpop scene in the early 1990s with a clamorous, post-U2 take on guitar rock, buoyed by the hit "Creep." They subsequently developed their songwriting and production skills on THE BENDS and achieved iconic status with their…

Led by depressive pop prince Robert Smith, the Cure have taken their legions of fans on a journey from post-punk to gothic to new wave to art rock, stopping only for refills of hairspray along the way. An amazing band both live and in the studio, the…

Tom Waits started out in the early 1970s as a piano-based barroom balladeer with a penchant for beat poetry and West Coast jazz. By the late '80s he had mutated into a brilliantly adventurous artist whose style suggested an amalgam of Howlin' Wolf, K…

Singer/songwriter Mark Oliver Everett started out under the moniker A Man Called E, releasing two albums of dark, melodic pop in the early 1990s. After forming Eels and signing to a new label, Everett's work became even darker, and the production bec…

U2's Bono was one of the few real rock heroes of the 1980s, leading the Irish band to international recognition with a charged, political approach to music. The band's early efforts brought a stadium-size presence to alt-rock, with Bono's expressive …

Led by former school teacher Robert Pollard, Dayton, OH's Guided By Voices pursued an aesthetic marked by structural brevity, lo-fi sound, bizarre lyrics, and a preference for early to mid-period Who and other primal pop-rock. Pollard continually shi…

Buffalo Tom were one of the sturdiest bands of the Massachusetts college rock scene of the late 1980s and early '90s. Offering a sound that encompassed the main sonic aspects of nearly the whole of alternative and underground rock during the era--jan…

Beginning as just another Brit-pop band with promise, Blur has exceeded all expectations. Their debut release showed a flair for catchy guitar-based tunes, their next three effectively channeled various British music traditions to create an eclectic …

Who would have guessed that one of the more influential indie rock bands of the 1990s would emerge from Boise, Idaho? That's exactly what happened in the case of Built To Spill, who started out as a somewhat ragged, lo-fi outfit. By '97, though, they…

Liz Phair burst onto the indie rock scene in 1993, riding a wave of hype and acclaim that heralded her Matador Records debut, EXILE IN GUYVILLE. Conceived as a song-for-song response to the Rolling Stones' EXILE ON MAIN STREET, GUYVILLE boasted cleve…

When pioneering alt-country band Uncle Tupelo split in the mid-1990s, they broke off into two camps. Jay Farrar started the rootsy, twangy (if lyrically elliptical) Son Volt. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Jeff Tweedy, who co-led the band with Farrar, e…

Pearl Jam strode the middle of the neo-hard rock road manfully with their angst-ridden anthemic tunes bearing echoes of 1970s riff-rock. They arrived as part of Seattle's grunge explosion, with a sound less "punk" than Nirvana and less "metal" than S…