Former D Generation singer Jesse Malin’s made no bones about his love for Paul Westerberg, following Ryan Adams down that now well-worn country-rock path on his last album, The Fine Art of Self-Destruction, which Adams produced. Like most of Adams’ solo work, the album had more trappings than content, and…
Great music is often born in obscurity, and, at least in this country, that’s where it usually dies. Thankfully, the members of Sloan reside in Canada (where they’re stars), which has afforded savvy Americans the opportunity to enjoy their steady stream of great albums. While united by rich melody and…
The voice that launched a thousand careers (from ATB to Paula Cole and dozens of other imitators), Lilith Fair founder Sarah McLachlan took “Possession” of the female singer/songwriter crown in 1993 with her third album, the multi-platinum Fumbling Toward Ecstasy. One can hardly blame her that so many less talented…
Before the pop punk wing took control of emo, the genre was influenced by the churning, contrapuntal guitar acrobatics of math rock and post-core vets such as Jawbox and Fugazi. In Braid, you can hear this uneasy clash of styles in songs such as “Never Will Come For Us” and…
Part of Devendra Banhart’s appeal is the sheer magnitude of his iconoclasm. Nobody sounds quite like him. With his wobbly, warbling falsetto, colorful but unusual lyricism, and penchant for musical and vocal outbursts that run counter to the slow-bubbling acoustic folk informing his arrangements, he’s like the crazy uncle who,…
When Hip-Hop strolled into the debutante ball in her homespun garb, she barely got a glance. Those who did look scoffed at her lack of instruments, forgetting that guitarsbassdrums are only tools, with no imagination besides that which is brought to them. Two decades later, sitting prettier after capping the…
The Promise Ring’s reign as one of emo’s flagship bands had nearly ended by the time kiddy pop-punkers like Good Charlotte or New Found Glory started cashing their Hot Topic merch checks. After a brain tumor and surgery gave leader Davey Von Bohlen a brief scare, he led the Promise…
In the mid- to late ’90s, Armand Van Helden was the name in American progressive trance and house, penning hits like “U Don’t Know Me” and “Witch Doktor,” while remixing tracks by everyone from Puff Daddy to the Rolling Stones. His two post-millennial LPs met with tepid critical press and…
Crawling like a sunrise across a parched desert landscape, Califone’s rootsy folk-blues has all the spacious grace of an Ennio Morricone spaghetti Western soundtrack, ushered into the 21st century by the background clatter and thrum of electronics. Forged from the ashes of Red Red Meat, the Chicago quartet continues to…
J.J. Cale moves to the beat of his own drummer, and invariably it’s a blues shuffle, the laid-back snare snap mirroring his laconic vocal delivery. Just as Cale takes his time musically, the ethos extends to his career. It was more than a dozen years between the young Tulsa native’s…
A Halloween joy ride through the rockabilly side of town, Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers conjure a backwoods boogie that recalls Southern Culture on the Skids and The Cramps, but with a hip-loose, wild-eyed, blues-inflected fervor that’s all their own. The fun starts with lead singer J.D. Wilkes, whose spectacular mouth-harp…
With their mutating time signatures, intricate guitar interplay and ever-shifting syncopations, math rock bands can produce more glazed expressions than two variable differential equations. But that’s not the case with Don Caballero, whose hairpin time changes and supple melodic maneuvers are more roller-coaster ride than graduate dissertation. The linchpin is…
His cowboy hat should clue you in, but if you’re slow on the pickup, let’s just say DJ D:Fuse isn’t your typical dance-club spinner. Raised on album rock and alternative music through his youth, D:Fuse (a.k.a. Dustin Fuselier) wanted to get away from that, so he started the industrial act…
Husky-throated Austin, Texas, singer Bob Schneider is a musical jack-of-all-trades. In the ’90s, Schneider fronted a funk-rap combo (Joe Rockhead), followed by a blues-based jam band on tour with Dave Matthews (the Ugly Americans), culminating with a hard-edged alt-rock act (The Scabs). Since the turn of the millennium, Schneider’s been…
Old man Winter is white enough in hair and pallor to carry off the moniker, but his heart is full of deep, poignant blues rich enough for the paintings of Paul Gauguin. Playing in bands since his earliest teens, Winter started as the kind of prodigy who made Jonny Lang…
Ben Kweller could be America’s answer to Australia’s Ben Lee, who, like Kweller, made news in the ’90s with his teen band (Noise Addict as opposed to Kweller’s Silverchair clone, Radish). He also has a cute, moppish look, and purveys a gentle, slightly goofy, lovelorn lyricism. Except nobody knows who…
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Once, the roar of punk rock noise rallied a cry of anomie and alienation like a shot across the slowly steaming and sprawling suburban bow, spawning the vibrant, diverse Eighties underground. Now it seems the gentle swoon of traditional folk, country and blues — housed under the guise of Americana…
As the shelf life of pop confections shortens and our flash-cut attention span for artistic growth and progression shrinks, so has the number of acts able to break out of genre pigeonholes to establish an identity of their own. It’s too late for emo’s stragglers who have seemingly been swallowed…
Tired of pop stars and the drama of their daily existences? Sick of snotty Brits and has-been pop tarts adjudicating a glorified karaoke contest? Had enough of self-absorbed metal acts and the (overcompensating) Wagnerian size of their angst? Then come out to see Dysrhythmia, whose cascading tones of surprisingly supple…
In the tradition of guitar virtuosos Michael Hedges and Leo Kottke, Keller Williams is a one-man band, a 10-string prodigy, finger-picking with his right hand and banging out rhythms on his customized rig with his left, while triggering any number of loops and samples electronically. Though based in a loose-limbed…
Nada Surf once ruled the airwaves, but their reign was briefer than that of the homecoming queen, destining them for the cultural curio shop along with Monica’s beret. Cast off by Epic when their second album, The Proximity Effect, failed to prove as, um, “popular” as their debut, the band…
