Dierks Bentley knows where his bread is buttered, which is why the country superstar’s upcoming benefit concert at Tempe Marketplace has a Harley-and-highway theme and not, say, a redecorate-your-loft theme. “Miles & Music for Kids” will offer fellow road warriors the opportunity to cruise from Cave Creek to Tempe with…
John Prine sang about senility at 19, ditched his record label at 38, and became an indie darling at 59. As a music icon, he has seemingly unspooled in reverse, a country-folk Benjamin Button. Through all the ups and downs, including a bout with neck cancer in the ’90s that…
Neil Sedaka was right: Breaking up is hard to do. Especially when you and your lover are a pair of working musicians with a productive and profitable creative partnership. Then it’s real, real hard. The trick, if you can do it: Break up, but don’t disband. Glen Hansard and Marketa…
“Like a Disney ride, but with murder.” That’s how frontman/creator Brendon Small describes the “virtual” live show he puts on in the guise of Dethklok, the animated heavy metal quintet whose comic misadventures and skull-blasting power-chords form the basis of the cult series Metalocalypse on Adult Swim. Small “performs” as…
You would be forgiven if you assumed that Powerman 5000 was a protein-rich meal-replacement shake or the name of a roughly three-mile charity race benefiting lupus sufferers. But you’d be wrong. It is, in fact, the 15-year-old industrial metal band fronted by Rob Zombie’s real-life kid brother, Spider One (a.k.a…
Neil Sedaka was right: Breaking up is hard to do. Especially when you and your lover are a pair of working musicians with a productive and profitable creative partnership. Then it’s real, real hard. The trick, if you can do it: Break up, but don’t disband. Glen Hansard and Marketa…
You would be forgiven if you assumed that Powerman 5000 was a protein-rich meal replacement shake, or the name of a roughly-three-mile charity race benefiting lupus sufferers. But you’d be wrong. It is, in fact, the 15-year-old industrial metal band fronted by Rob Zombie’s real-life kid brother, Spider One (aka…
Frontman? Frontman?! This proggy instrumental-metal outfit doesn’t need no stinking frontman. On Geneva, their third full-length album, the Chicago-based trio proves fully capable of creating scintillating song narratives simply by shredding their asses off. From guitarist Mike Sullivan’s ominous, beast-summoning strikes on “Fathom” to the empty-desert bleakness of Brian Cook’s…
Old hardcore rockers don’t die — they just learn to play “This Land is Your Land.” At least, that seems to be the operating principle behind this newly annual roots-rock hootenanny. Only Chuck Ragan of Hot Water Music is back from the last year’s maiden Revival Tour, but the format…
To borrow an overused but otherwise well-suited sports trope, Rufus Wainwright prefers to “leave everything on the field.” Or in the recording studio, as the case may be. Known for his wrenching reveries, plainspoken torch songs, and operatic ballads of confession, the 36-year-old singer-songwriter is not one for holding back…
We have nothing against the Dodge Theatre. We love the Dodge Theatre. But when it comes to jam bands like Widespread Panic, we prefer wide-open, outdoors-y venues that help us cope with the peyote buttons we probably just ate. Because, face it: The only way to enjoy Widespread Panic —…
With his dangling white tresses, wispy white beard, stiff-rimmed white Stetson, and tailored, double-breasted white suit, music legend Leon Russell cuts a distinctly angelic figure. One can almost imagine him cast in another Here Comes Mr. Jordan/Heaven Can Wait remake, playing a honky-tonk cherub who dispatches the mistakenly deceased Robert…
Gabe Saporta lifted the severed head of his one-time idol and mentor into the air and let forth a triumphant, guttural cry. “Behold! The beast, Pete Wentz!” Saporta roared, eliciting awestruck cheers from the mob of admirers spread below him on the White House’s south lawn. Eyes twinkling with cold…
It’s possible, even probable, that Philly lo-fi darling Kurt Vile was wearing nothing more than boxer shorts and a stained wife-beater when he recorded Constant Hitmaker, the 2007 mini-label LP that announced his unique sound to the greater indie-rock community. That’s one of the advantages of recording an album in…
Though his skin boasts less pigment than a peeled lychee nut, this Minneapolis-based Albino MC is not tight with white. Teased ruthlessly by fellow white classmates as a child, the albino artist formerly known as Jason Newman found comfort and outsider-kinship among black people. Subsequently, he became more of a…
Boy, did we drop the ball on emo. For the longest time, we coolly dismissed it as drama-drenched poseur-rock; all histrionics, no substance. Then lawmakers in Russia went and introduced legislation to ban emo fashions and regulate emo Web sites throughout the mother country. Male eyeliner as the tip of…
Forget that Sean Kingston is about as reggae-sounding as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Forget that he uses Auto-Tune more than Kanye West singing the collected works of Freddie Mercury. The important thing to remember is that, well, he’s lovable. He’s a round mound of raw teenage heartbreak that brings out…
Leave it to a folk singer to conjure a folksy-funny name like Monsters of Folk. It’s knowing, it’s smart, it’s self-deprecating — exactly what you’d expect from the four low-key indie-rock luminaries who compose this most retiring of supergroups. But are they really all that? New Times had a sit-down…
Forget that Sean Kingston is about as reggae-sounding as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Forget that he uses Auto-Tune more than Kanye West singing the collected works of Freddy Mercury. The important thing to remember is that, well, he’s lovable. He’s a round mound of raw teenage heartbreak that brings out…
Hold on a second: It’s called the Atticus Tour, and the co-headliner is a band called Finch? Wow, that’s really precious. Maybe they’ll hire Scout Willis as a cage-dancer, or add melancholy indie-pop duo Harper Lee to the bill later on. Actually, let’s hope they don’t. Featuring the identical swept…
Hold on a second: It’s called the Atticus Tour, and the co-headliner is a band called Finch? Wow, that’s really precious. Maybe they’ll hire Scout Willis as a cage-dancer, or add melancholy indie-pop duo Harper Lee to the bill later on. Actually, let’s hope they don’t. Featuring the identical swept…
Does a Starfucker by any other name sound as sweet? We’re about to find out. In a recent interview with their hometown newspaper, the Portland Mercury, the synth-pop foursome officially put the ixnay on the snarky moniker that has served them so ably and profanely since they started playing as…
