The duo of Jean Smith and Dave Lester have revived Mecca Normal, their vocals-and-guitar indie-punk act that, since starting in 1984, has released discs on K Records, Matador, Sub Pop, and Kill Rock ...

Smarten Up & Get to the Point. It's good advice in any realm, but especially so in the tantrum-prone world of underground rock 'n' roll. It's also the name of the publishing arm of the two-person ...

Mecca Normal aren’t for everyone: David Lester’s guitar accompaniment doesn’t give you much of a buffer against the rough, quirky intimacy of Jean Smith’s theatrical poetry, which gets so nakedly ...

Jean Smith says she started painting watercolor portraits of herself in 1973, at age 13, as a way of shoring up her self-image against her emotionally abusive parents, who were artists themselves.

BEGINNING WITH Mecca Normal's self-released debut, Jean Smith has been relaying dispatches from the gender wars. For the Vancouver duo's new album, "The Observer," the singer and multi-instrumentalist ...