The story with Apollo Sunshine is that nobody really knows the story. In so many ways, they were here and then they were gone. Fairly prolific in the few years following their 2003 debut, Katonah, their notoriety peaked in 2005, when they cropped up on more best-of lists than you could shake your overgrown facial hair at. But dead air descended sometime after the release of 2008’s Shall Noise Upon. This was around the time that two members of the core trio high-tailed it out of Boston for the trendier pastures of Brooklyn and San Francisco.

Music: there’s lots of it this weekend. Whether you want to listen to it in clubs stuffy or spacious, from sources live or digital, in a house or with a mouse, you are in luck.

Couple-fronted rock bands can get annoying. Or gimmicky. Or messy. But, despite their Boston rock band fairytale beginnings (Sara Cronin and Tommy Allen met while they were both working at the Middle East, and spent their first date playing music together) Drug Rug somehow manage to stay away from the trappings of indie rock spun from young love and manage to, well, rock.

Touring, touring and more touring: That’s what Southern-bred trio The Whigs has been up to for the past year or so, and they’ve been playing packed stadiums and crowded holes-in-the-wall alike abroad and across the country. Though their sound on record (especially on 2008’s Mission Control) is one that feels right at home in a dimly lit, gritty, made-for-garage-rock kind of spot, The Whigs are indisputably a live band that drum up a contagious, electrified energy that inspires even the most heavy-footed of concert goers to move their feet and bob their heads.

Over the course of three measly days, Gab, Jessie and I spent every waking moment running up and down the Bowery, East Houston and Bleecker in hopes of squeezing into the packed venues that hosted the stellar shows of this year’s CMJ Music Marathon.  Given that we were there to pay close attention to the [...]

After running around like crazy people hopping from show to show in the Lower East Side/East Village last night, Jessie and I passed out promptly upon returning to makeshift TPB CMJ headquarters and charged our batteries, literally and figuratively speaking, for the second day of our time at CMJ.  Huge bonus?  Gab arrived fresh off [...]