Christina Kelly

  • print December 1999

    Christina Kelly

    1. Nirvana (Nevermind) I can’t possibly think of anything new to say about this album. It’s everything good about the ’90s.

    2. Hole (Live Through This) The visceral female screaming is so cathartic, and it’s real easy to sing along to.

    3. Smashing Pumpkins (Gish) The drumming was the first thing I noticed when I heard the advance of this album. It’s still pretty exciting.

    4. Afghan Whigs (Gentlemen) An addictive, down-and-dirty album about egregious male behavior.

    5. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (Now I Got Worry) Cheat-on-your-boyfriend rock from the handsomest man in the business.

    6. Guided by Voices

  • music Summer 1995

    Jenny Toomey

    “LICORICE IS CANDY, but it’s not too sweet candy,“ says Dan Littleton, a guitar player in Liquorice. That aptly describes the music that comes out of Littleton and Jenny Toomey, his partner, music that sounds like Joni Mitchell filtered through a ’90s sensibility: acoustic guitar and sweet, meandering vocals underscored by an in-charge, unflustered attitude that only rarely cracks to show an iota of vulnerability. On “2nd Most Beautiful Girl” Toomey shows her take-no-shit side: “The second most beautiful girl in the world says she’s worried about me/the choices that I’m making, they just aren’t

  • music February 1995

    Drag City

    THE CHICAGO INDEPENDENT RECORD-LABEL Drag City has two major claims to fame: 1) it discovered critics’ darlings Pavement and Royal Trux, only to weather the inevitable cannibalization of those bands by bigger labels (Matador and Virgin respectively); 2) much as Sub Pop was considered the home of grunge, Drag City is known as a hotbed of lo-fi, the kind of cheaply recorded sound that dates back to the Velvet Underground and was revived by Beat Happening in the mid ’80s. Technically, “lo-fi” refers to the process of recording songs on inexpensive four-tracks, like Liz Phair did before she signed