It’s not a simple binary, but someone like Kendrick Lamar — lyrically skilled yet decidedly un-preachy, quick-tongued but hook-driven — has what it takes to split the difference between unflinching gangster rap audiences and ponderous “conscious” hip-hop heads. Hailing from Compton and boasting the endorsement of West Coast vicelord/expensive-headphone impresario…
Grimes @ Crescent Ballroom| 10/8/12What a difference six months makes. The last time Canadian synth-pop visionary Grimes visited Phoenix, her set was riddled with painful sound problems and an unruly crowd. Rumor had it Grimes herself separated the bathroom fight that resulted in a swarm of cops in the parking…
After the first Presidential debate this last Wednesday, much ado was made about Mitt Romney’s gleeful pledge to stuff and baste Big Bird by cutting federal funding to PBS and other pinko commie media outlets. Phoenix folk-punk heroes Andrew Jackson Jihad are clearly fans of the monstrous alphabet-loving avian–they have…
Last year, two mixtapes dropped that shifted R&B on its axis: Frank Ocean’s Nostalgia, Ultra and The Weeknd’s House of Balloons. Both took the standard propulsive club groove and softened it with production nuance, the lyrics conceding to self-doubt and disappointment. Soul jams were supposed to be the providence of…
Earlier this year, soulful goth songstress Zola Jesus confessed to New Times that she has a secret dream of transcending modest indie success and becoming a full-fledged Mariah Carey-type pop star. There’s a significant number of art-warped pop singers whose R&B hooks and highly cultivated visual aesthetics betray a similar…
Mt. Eerie and Bouquet @ Crescent Ballroom| 10/1/12Phil Elverum, the veteran soothsayer behind blackened avant-folk monolith Mt. Eerie, did two things that he hasn’t done in Phoenix for a very long time. First: he played with a full ensemble, complete with Sunn amp stacks and ominous keys, harboring a set…
Mac Demarco @ Trunk Space| Tuesday, September 18Seeing totally disparate genre blends in one night is cool, but it’s always nice to see a bill that is fully united under one auspice. I’m going to give last night’s Mac Demarco show an easy filing: The Joy of the Floor Tom…
See also: Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart: “Gnarly and Deep” See also: Swans’ Michael Gira Returns With The SeerSwans and Xiu Xiu @ Crescent Ballroom| Wednesday, September 12, 2012It was a night worth gutting one’s helpless past. Guys with goatees in the front row were pounding their fists on the stage;…
See also: Swans’ Michael Gira Returns With The Seer See also: Xiu Xiu: Dear God, I Hate Myself See also: Xiu Xiu and the Top Anthems of Self-LoathingThe cover of Xiu Xiu’s ninth studio album, Always, is a tight closeup of the band’s name and the album title tattooed on…
The good-for-nothing good ol’ boys of Natural Child must be stopped. This is a band that titled an earlier record 1971, a year these sprites clearly wished to have experienced, and are now plotting to name the rest of their output after fucking Kevin Costner movies. Their latest disc of…
There are many distinct “walls of sound,” though it might be easy to generalize their impactful effect on ones cranium and aural canal. There’s the Phil Spector recording technique which huddled a number of musicians across an equally scattered array of microphones, resulting in a panoramic, ensconced dynamic warmth. There’s…
See also: Local Wizards: Songwriter Makes “Based Garagebandcore;” We Interview Via TwitterThe pre-release fanfare for highly anticipated albums has gotten particularly elaborate recently. Avant-industrial legends Swans have the entirety of their latest two-hour, triple-LP epic available to stream on NPR Music, including a track that runs more than 30 minutes…
See also: Songwriter Michelle Blades Walks a Tightrope See also: Michelle Blades Streams Album, MarianaIn this week’s issue, we discuss Valley singer/songwriter Michelle Blades and her delicate balance between riot grrrl verve and orchestral grandeur. We ended up with more material than we could fit in print, so please enjoy…
There is a fine distinction between trusting one’s intuition and merely surrendering to impulse. Twenty-two-year-old songwriter Michelle Blades has walked this tightrope during her time in the desert, deftly veering from improvised jazz folk to staccato post-punk to full-length impressionistic baroque-pop records, all without a single glance over her shoulder…
King Tuff @ Meat Market Garment Factory| August, 19, 2012See also: King Tuff at Meat Market Garment Factory Show PreviewThe overcast summer evening meant lots of humid heat, building up exponentially as Meat Market grew packed with bodies. Turnout was solid for a showcase of anthemic yet charmingly lacksidasical pop…
It’s a very good time to be a hapless fuzz-rock magnate: Youthful disaffection is at an all-time high as unemployment and student-loan debt reach peak levels. Groovy rippers like Hunx and Mark Sultan dot the landscape with throwback rock maneuvers, while punk burnouts like Wavves’ Nathan Williams pack the bowl…
Agalloch, Taurus, and Rituals Rhythm Room Wednesday, August 8 See also: Agalloch: Folk-Metal Conjurers See also: Six Desert Metal Bands You Should Be Listening To Though the Rhythm Room parking lot was near capacity and the venue itself crammed full of metalheads, there wasn’t a single display of physicality last…
Aesop Rock is the most prominent of mega-verbose thesaurus MCs, but the veteran rapper has something the others don’t. Busdriver’s pranks are more smugly satisfying, and the proggy kinetics of Themselves more technically impressive, but Aesop creates entire realms with his cascading rhyme schemes. His new album, Skelethon, brought to…
See also: Filardo, “I Can Love You More” See also: Key Losers’ Katy Davidson: “Phoenix Is Way Cooler than Portland, In a Lot of Ways.” Discussing the inspiration behind his new dark pop outfit Bouquet, Tempe songwriter Tom Filardo says the idea is fairly literal: a number of self-contained contributions…
Everyone loves an underdog, but even more, they love to be the underdog, even if the evidence suggests otherwise. The Tea Party paints itself as a grass-roots middle-class movement, but it consists mostly of white middle-class suburbanites, the biggest voting bloc. This year’s Miami Heat championship team was granted a…
Portland folk-metal conjurers Agalloch are among the best of a growing sect of earthy, naturalistic metal bands. The band’s 2010 full-length marathon, Marrow of the Spirit, is an hour-long journey that intertwines black-metal caterwaul with acoustic guitar flourishes, low-end piano stabs, and sublime cello arrangements. This approach is similar to…
See also: Glass Popcorn: Is This High School Rapper “Destroying Hip-Hop?” If my previous ink on local 15-year-old cloud rapper Will Neibergall, aka Glass Popcorn, left too much to the imagination, the day has finally come for his YouTube chrysalis to crack. He has spread his high-def wings and premiered…
