Like most foodies, I’m fond of almost all ethnic cuisines, and I’m always heartened to hear of another attempting a toe-hold in greater Phoenix. Indeed, upon learning of one, my first instinct is to pull on my socks and head out the door quicker than Pope Benedict XVI can sputter…
It wouldn’t be quite fair to call trance kingpin Josh Wink a hippie, but hell, we will anyway, because of his vegan lifestyle and the years he wore his blond hair in long dreadlocks. But then again, hippies aren’t known for being anti-drug — for that matter, neither are trance…
Denmark’s Raveonettes are not exactly soulful, but they are soulfully obsessed with pop music’s halcyon past. And unlike most other style bands, Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo sculpt their obsession into something beautiful, not merely fashionable. Pretty in Black, the boy-girl duo’s third and most original album, combines early-’60s…
Rock is like a young Clark Kent still discovering his abilities: sometimes a little immature in the application. Thus rock sometimes feels the need to demonstrate its dominance, slapping its roaring guitar member on the table like a grotesque gavel. But majesty is another form of power, and delicacy can…
Around your bros, it’s impossible not to sneer at the mawkish sentimentality of Hopes and Fears, the debut from Brit trio Keane. But get those same guys around their girlfriends and wives, and the record takes on this weird power — it becomes . . . beautiful . . …
It’s one of music’s great arguments whether great bands are the product of movements or their creators. Put another way: Had Agnostic Front formed at any other time, would it have been as important? Leader of the mid-’80s NYC hardcore movement, Agnostic Front was one of the first to deliver…
A couple of Sunday afternoons ago, about an hour before the New Times Music Showcase began, I was drinking a beer at the Tavern on Mill with Natalie Espinosa, guitarist and singer for local girl trio and Best Indie Rock nominee Bella, talking about her band’s impending last-ever show, trying…
The pop ledger is littered with entries for bands that failed to make it despite huge inventories of creativity and talent, but instead found their legacy in the parts other bands might salvage off them. The Wonder Stuff scored 17 Top 20 singles in the U.K., and even a U.S…
Phoenix New Times was honored with seven first-place awards — from column writing to magazine cover design — at the Arizona Press Club’s 81st annual banquet, held April 23 at the Heard Museum. In all, New Times won 20 Press Club awards. Staff writers Paul Rubin and Robert Nelson were…
Recent events lead me to believe that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio may again be abusing his police powers for political purposes. That is, the paranoid and increasingly disoriented Arpaio is turning up the heat on some of us who have landed on his enemies list. In the past month,…
Kyle Kaenel doesn’t walk through barns at Turf Paradise so much as swagger John Wayne style, as if someone has kicked him in the butt so hard that he can’t sit down. He’s 17 and lighting it up in his first year as a jockey, 2,000 miles from home and…
Virgil Ortiz, ceramicist, fashion designer and Cochiti Pueblo Indian, makes visual mash-ups by putting designs inspired by traditional tribal pottery in contemporary places. In “La Renaissance Indigène” at the Heard Museum, Ortiz’s black-and-white swirls, lines and animals show up on purses, corsets and skirts; in a jerky black-and-white video; and…
Marcia Myers grooves on color, texture and ancient Italy. Her abstract diptychs and triptychs — artspeak for paintings made of two or three panels attached to one another — are floating fields of sun-soaked Mediterranean color that will remind you of an ancient Roman villa crossed with a cool, downtown…
“Street Credibility”: Diane Arbus stars in an exhibition that puts her photos alongside the work of photographers who influenced her, and the ones who followed in her footsteps. The exhibition fails to show how the accidental strangeness of documentary photography morphed into the deliberate strangeness of art photography, because in…
Want to know what’s spicing up the night on Cinco de Mayo? Put away the blender and the salt and head to one of the more than 100 celebrations and activities taking place all over the Valley. We have everything from parties south of the border to kid-friendly fiestas. But…
THU 28 Still thumping “Hey Jealousy” from your Dodge Laser and mouthing “The Gin Blossoms are sooo fresh” to a carload of babes at the stoplight? Time to hightail it to Martini Ranch, 7295 East Stetson Drive in Scottsdale, on Thursday, April 28, for New Times New Music, which starts…
Thursday 28Acme Roadhouse: College Night with DJ J. Alan (Top 40) Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness: DJ Suzy (hip-hop, dance) Anderson’s Fifth Estate: Area 51 with AKA (gothic, industrial) Axis/Radius: DJ MCB (hip-hop, dance) AZ 88: DJ P-Body (jazz fusion, funk) Big Fish Pub: Reggae with Selector J-Cut & DJ Blackstar (reggae,…
Outside the scope of rock and pop, “supergroups” are less heralded. Besides the acclaimed Masters of Persian Music, Arabic folk mergers remain sparse. Niyaz (NEE-az) easily slips into that category, drawing from a thousand years of Iranian and Indian influence and rebooting it with digital charges. Comprising former Vas vocalist…
The original twist of ’70s glam rock — in its less artsy (and better) form — was the basic contradiction of dudes in outrageously feminine costumes playing aggressive, back-to-basics rock ‘n’ roll. To varying degrees, Slade, T. Rex, and Gary Glitter exemplified this angle of the weirdest chapter of British…
Like its sonic predecessors — jazz, blues and R&B — hip-hop is undergoing a massive assimilation until everything is tinged with, in one way or another, rap. The sheer amount of gimmickry in producing and presenting “original” hip-hop today is daunting, which is why a record like True & Livin’…
A full five years after the landmark The Unseen, producer/MC/chronic chameleon Madlib once more huffs helium and becomes the high-pitched hooligan Quasimoto. But times have changed and so has ‘Lib, because where The Unseen was a mind-warping fusion of space-age samples and hyperspeed rhyming, The Further Adventures of Lord Quas…
Artson enters the game with a pedigree: He was a member of the legendary Rocksteady Crew, and his record boasts guest shots by Tash of Tha Alkaholiks, and Likwit Junkie Wildchild. And on a first pass, he passes muster. The production on songs like the album-opening “Who” and the quasi-Latin…
