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Steve LaBate

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

By date | By artist | Most recently added

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 ...

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. ...

Isobel Campbell: Amorino

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 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. ...

Wilco: A Ghost Is Born

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 ...

Phish: Undermind

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 ...

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. ...

Mark Sandman: Sandbox

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Ike & Tina Turner: Sing The Blues

Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 4 December 2008

Embattled husband-and-wife duo's last independent-label recordings ...

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 ...

Todd Snider: The Storyteller

Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 8 February 2011

Songwriter's songwriter creates hilarious and heartbreaking time capsule of life in our time ...

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 ...

DeVotchKa: 100 Lovers

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 ...

Dum Dum Girls: He Gets Me High

Review by Steve LaBate, Paste, 1 March 2011

14 minutes in heaven… ...

Bright Eyes: The People's Key

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Shonen Knife: Osaka Ramones

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 ...

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 ...

The Melvins: No Regrets

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 ...

Baroness: Yellow & Green

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The Raveonettes: L.A. Story

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 ...

Aimee Mann: Charmer

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 ...

The Whigs: Enjoy the Company

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 ...

Mark Kozelek: Like Rats

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 ...

Goodie Mob Returns

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Broken Bells: After the Disco

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 ...

Thee Oh Sees: Drop

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 ...

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