The Facebook biography of the Chicago-based trio Cains & Abels is four words: "honest rock and roll."
That might sound glib, vague, evasive, or even a dig at other bands - and it is. But a truer explanation is that singer/songwriter/bassist David Sampson means it, and to expand on the idea would simply take too long. When I asked him a general question about the genesis of "Money" - from the band's gorgeously, patiently articulated My Life Is Easy album - he talked for more than four minutes.
He touched on how his fictional songs seemed to bring their specific sadnesses into his life, and how he decided - almost as a joke - to write happy songs to conjure a different vibe.
"One of the main troubles in my life is money," he said. He discussed how hip-hop artists rap about what they aspire to, and "if it works out, ... they've made it happen by talking about it. ... So I decided at one point that I should try to write some songs about how awesome it is to be wealthy, or at least comfortable financially."
He then deflated what had seemed a hopeful tale. "I ended up writing a song addressing money as a lover that spurned me," he said. "It didn't actually come out the way I intended it to."
Even Sampson's fantasies are weighed down by truth; he couldn't complete a tongue-in-cheek exercise in wish fulfillment.
When I interviewed Better Than Ezra singer/songwriter/guitarist Kevin Griffin earlier this month, I asked him whether the group's next album - originally conceived as a late-2012 release - had been pushed to next year to mark the band's quarter-century milestone.
Josh Duffee admits that his Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival schedule is intense. The 32-year-old percussionist will be playing with three groups and performing more than a dozen times over five days, but he said it's not exhausting.
If you're a fellow fan of Twin Peaks - David Lynch's 1990-91 cult favorite in which Special Agent Dale Cooper investigated the murder of high-schooler Laura Palmer - you can listen to folk singer/songwriter Sofia Talvik's latest CD thinking that the Swedish musician sounds, sometimes uncannily, like that TV series' resident chanteuse, Julee Cruise. With her light, airy soprano and haunting, faraway melancholy, it's easy to imagine Talvik herself hypnotizing crowds in a small-town biker bar, right before vanishing into the ether and being replaced by a cryptic bald giant. (It was that kind of show, bless its demented heart.)
We interviewed The Baseball Project's Scott McCaughey last year, and that article can be found at 
The venerable Chicago band The Sea & Cake will release its 10th album in September. Singer/guitarist/songwriter Sam Prekop told me it will be called Runner. And ... well, that's about all he offered initially.
What's essential to know about the Redstone Room's June 14 headliner can be summed up succinctly: Richard Lloyd was one of the guitarists of Television, the seminal band whose 1977 Marquee Moon is widely considered a great debut, an unmistakable influence on post-punk and alternative rock, and a classic, period.
The Los Angeles-based quintet Spindrift has developed a reputation for its cinematic sound - something that started with a score for a film that was then only an idea in the head of bandleader Kirpatrick Thomas: The Legend of God's Gun, which later became a 2007 feature written and directed by Mike Bruce. One track for that film was used in 2008's Hell Ride - executive-produced by Quentin Tarantino - and Thomas now has three additional film-score-composer credits with Spindrift.
