Steve LaBate
Steve LaBate was an associate editor of Paste magazine between 2003 and 2010. He remains a contributing writer to Paste and to Georgia Music, and now operates his own publicity business.
36 articles
List of articles in the library
Ryan Adams & The Cardinals: Cardinology
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 28 October 2008
I'VE NEVER UNDERSTOOD the fuss over Ryan Adams' prolificacy. Each of his nine previous albums has its own distinct identity, from his 2000 solo debut ...
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 18 July 2012
THE MEMBERS OF BARONESS have always mixed in a little indie rock with their occasionally sludgy brand of prog metal. And they've always peppered their ...
The Beach Boys: Ocean Way: The studio that shaped the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds
Retrospective by Steve LaBate, Bud Scoppa, Paste, June 2004
This is the first piece included in a longer feature for Paste June/July 2004. ...
Review and Interview by Steve LaBate, Paste, 8 March 2011
BRIGHT EYES' LATEST ALBUM, The People's Key, plays like some strange transmission beamed from deep space. In other words, it's nothing like its tethered-to-earth 2007 ...
Bright Eyes, Conor Oberst: Conor Oberst: Catching Up With... Bright Eyes
Interview by Steve LaBate, Paste, 23 February 2011
AFTER A LENGTHY FOUR-YEAR HIATUS from the band that launched his career, Conor Oberst has reunited with his longtime Bright Eyes collaborators Mike Mogis and ...
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 4 February 2014
IT'S FRIDAY NIGHT. You and your friends roll up on the club. It has no sign — no flashing marquee to beckon you inside. It ...
Solomon Burke: Make Do With What You Got
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 1 April 2005
WHEN LEGENDARY ARTISTS like B.B. King or James Brown grow old and start resting on their laurels, it's easy to forgive them. After all, they've ...
Bill Callahan: Have Fun With God
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 21 January 2014
AS THE TITLE suggests, this record is the ghost of Bill Callahan's Dream River, drifting hypnotic across the astral plane and breaking through the white ...
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 1 February 2004
BEFORE HER AMICABLE SPLIT with Belle & Sebastian in 2002, cellist-vocalist Isobel Campbell recorded two albums with her side project, The Gentle Waves. Amorino, her ...
The Dap-Kings, Sharon Jones: Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings: I Learned the Hard Way
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 6 April 2010
SHARON JONES WAS BRIMMING with promise as a kid in church choirs in the 1960s, as she bounced back and forth between her birth city ...
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 1 March 2011
DEVOTCHKA'S FIFTH STUDIO LP, 100 Lovers, begins with a gorgeously moody and cinematic wash of synths, strings and piano seeping forth as if water through ...
Drive-By Truckers: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Redneck Warrior Poets of Rock 'n' Roll
Profile and Interview by Steve LaBate, Paste, 1 August 2004
TEN, NINE... This is a story about rock 'n' roll. ...
Dum Dum Girls: He Gets Me High
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 1 March 2011
14 minutes in heaven… ...
Retrospective and Interview by Steve LaBate, Paste, 26 August 2013
After a 14-year hiatus of the legendary rap group's original lineup, and CeeLo's explosion as a pop-culture icon, the originators of smart, righteously indignant Southern ...
Albert Hammond Jr.: Albert Hammond, Jr.: Chasing Greatness
Interview by Steve LaBate, Paste, 20 January 2014
IT'S BEEN 13 lucky years — count 'em — since The Strokes' epic garage- and post-punk-channeling debut provided an indispensable shot in the arm to ...
Kelly Hogan: I Like to Keep Myself in Pain
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 6 June 2012
WHEN KELLY HOGAN'S last solo record was released, Ground Zero was still smoldering in Manhattan. More than a decade has slipped by since then, but ...
Rickie Lee Jones: So Many Roads
Interview by Steve LaBate, Paste, 27 August 2012
OVER UNDERSTATED, PERCUSSIVE ACOUSTIC GUITAR and the barely-there, spectral drone of an ancient organ, the voice of Rickie Lee Jones seeps like water from a ...
Alicia Keys: The Diary of Alicia Keys
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 1 February 2004
AT THE TOP OF THE POP WORLD these days, it’s hard enough to find an artist who can sing well without the aid of ProTools. ...
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 19 February 2013
THE CONCEPT BEHIND Mark Kozelek's new record — take metal songs, punk songs, classic-rock and pop songs and deliver 'em slow and soft, accompanied only ...
The Libertines: Libertines Rock The Cotton Club, Atlanta
Live Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 19 August 2003
AMIDST RUMORS of drug addiction and rehab, Libertines' singer-guitarist Pete Doherty has been out of commission for the past few weeks, skipping the band's European ...
Stephen Malkmus: Man in the Mirror
Interview by Steve LaBate, Paste, 16 August 2011
IN SWELTERING L.A. — Hollywood, to be exact, right on the Sunset Strip — Stephen Malkmus and his band, the Jicks, are hard at work ...
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 19 September 2012
THIS ALBUM is full of horrible, heartbreaking things. Things that happen not just to bad people but good people, too. Of course, by the time ...
J Mascis: Several Shades of Why
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 21 March 2011
IT'S HARD TO BELIEVE THAT — after 25 years of squalling guitar rock with Dinosaur Jr and a slew of other bands (from The Fog ...
Report and Interview by Steve LaBate, Paste, 11 June 2012
On the cusp of their 30th anniversary, the Godfathers of Grunge are too busy for nostalgia trips. Inside Atlanta's The Loft — a barely lit, industrial ...
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 2 July 2004
THIS LATEST PHISHING TRIP begins as you'd expect a Tchad Blake-produced record would — in a fog of creepy, bone rattling Waits-ian gothic rambling, pinging ...
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: Mature Themes
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 21 August 2012
WITH ALL THE BUZZ that's been building for him and his Haunted Graffiti bandmates over the last several years, this new record could have been ...
Interview by Steve LaBate, Paste, 12 September 2012
THE RAVEONETTES' latest, Observator, was supposed to be an L.A. record. Gearing up to write for it, frontman Sune Rose Wagner blasted The Doors on ...
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 1 February 2005
DARK, WITTY, LONELY, BRILLIANT, TRAGIC — Mark Sandman was all these things. Fronting legendary Boston band Morphine, he realized his unique vision, creating a style ...
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 10 January 2012
WHEN THEIR FIRST HOMEMADE CASSETTE came out in Japan in 1982, who woulda thought that Shonen Knife would still be around, making records and touring ...
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 8 February 2011
Songwriter's songwriter creates hilarious and heartbreaking time capsule of life in our time ...
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 22 April 2014
FROM THE VERY FIRST 'Sweat Leaf'-channeling fuzz riff, there's no question what's being "dropped" on this latest dispatch from prolific San Francisco garage-psych veterans Thee ...
Those Darlins: Screws Get Loose
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 29 March 2011
WHETHER YOU THOUGHT they were a quirky-obnoxious novelty act or a gang of infinitely charming, boots-are-made-for-rockin' Americana party girls, forget your initial impression of Those ...
Ike & Tina Turner: Sing The Blues
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 4 December 2008
Embattled husband-and-wife duo's last independent-label recordings ...
Uncle Tupelo: No Depression (Legacy Edition)
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 28 January 2014
IN THE SUMMER OF 1990, somewhere in the puzzling chasm between lipstick-smeared hair-metal excess and flannel-clad grunge irony, Uncle Tupelo arrived on the scene like ...
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 25 September 2012
OVER THE SPAN of 10 years and four albums, The Whigs have simmered their energetic, overdriven, no-frills rock sound to its potent essence. It's been ...
Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 1 June 2004
SO HOW DO YOU follow the dense, experimental, critically worshipped Yankee Hotel Foxtrot? The latest version of Wilco answers with an overwhelming, at times postmodern ...
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