“Here in this hole that we have fixed/We get further and further and further from what/We must do.” So sings Chan Marshall in a slurry/sleepy voice on “In This Hole,” the emotional centerpiece, and the only self-penned number, on The Covers Record. The album’s already being dubbed “Chan Gets Difficult…
Leroy Percy Years in the Making (Reckless Abandon Music) Somebody took a ball-peen hammer and shattered Leroy Percy’s heart into so many pieces they’re still finding parts as far north as Pinnacle Peak Road and down south along the banks of the Gila River. Luckily for Phoenicians, the local singer-songwriter…
I know, I know. . . . You’ve already been spotted hanging around emo chat rooms, wringing your hands (mouse?) over your favorite band being dropped, and unceremoniously so, by Warner Bros. Just seeing the words Sense Field on this page is enough to make you burst out in tears…
The Flaming Lips saga has been told and retold an endless number of times. In fact, this very publication recounted it to a reasonable degree last year (“Unconsciously Brilliant,” October 28) in a review of the group’s Restless Records retrospective 1984-1990. In that article, yours truly suggested that the Lips’…
Five years can seem a long time for anyone, and as the saying goes, that’s a lifetime in rock ‘n’ roll. Such was the case with Tucson’s Rich Hopkins, who debuted upon the scene in 1988 with his band the Sidewinders and their first album Cuacha!. With the Sidewinders, Hopkins…
Giant Sand Chore of Enchantment (Thrill Jockey) Calexico Descamino (Quarter Stick) Giant Sand main man Howe Gelb once quipped to me that much of his work falls into the “that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” category. So his new album is striking, as much for its magisterial sonic…
Given that this Chapel Hill, North Carolina, combo’s willful brand of anonymity-mongering ranks alongside Will Oldham’s irritating early dalliances with Palace self-obfuscation, one is tempted to level accusations of preciousness at it. Nowhere in the sleeve credits does one obtain personnel or instrumentation details, merely song titles, thank yous, and…
Time for a Jimi Hendrix moment. Imagine, for just a minute, that you’re shuffling around on a Manhattan sidewalk outside the Fillmore East one late December 1969 afternoon. Longhaired, pock-faced roadies have been rolling gear into the legendary venue for a couple of hours, and you notice that a pair…
There are, of course, the great intro riffs: Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” Led Zep’s “Whole Lotta Love,” B.O.C.’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl,” etc. Oft copped, rarely topped. Instinctively grasping this, Fu Manchu still manages to elbow some room with a brand of high-octane, hard-pounding psychedelia that’s instantly…
Is it too late to revise all those best-of-’99 lists? Surely anyone with two ears, a brain and a heart will slide this to the top if made aware of its compelling, and tantalizingly mysterious, tableaux of primary colors and thatched shadings. Papa M’s quasi-“debut” appeared in the bins without…
An album that defies easy dissection on most levels, Illyah Kuryahkin’s sophomore effort is also one of the more adventurous and sonically mesmerizing of the year. Dean Wilson (a.k.a. one-man band I.K.) first surfaced in ’96 with Count No Count, a kind of No Wave take on Guided by Voices’…
“I’m a redneck and I’m proud of it,” my late peach farmer-turned-politician daddy once told me, much to the horror of a teenage son who, at the time, was struggling to let his own inner hippie come out. It wasn’t easy growing up a free thinker in the South during…
Retrospectives of bands are so de rigueur these days that no one even blinks when they walk into a store on new-release day to encounter a new four-disc boxed-set anthology of some rock superstar’s collective wheezings, a handy-dandy greatest hits package (featuring, of course, two “new” compositions to enhance the…
“My idea,” said Bruce Springsteen in 1996, responding to a reporter’s query about the songwriter’s intent, “wasn’t to get the next 10 songs and put out an album and get out on the road. I wrote with purpose in mind, so I edited very intensely the music I was writing…
The Go Whatcha Doin’ (Sub-Pop) For rock ‘n’ roll fans, these are troubled times. Contrary to popular belief, it has nothing to do with the emergence of the Backstreet Boys, Ricky Martin, Limp Bizkit or any of the other cretins currently occupying the upper echelon of Billboard’s Top 200. Manufactured…
It’s a Friday night in June on Tucson’s Fourth Avenue. The influx of University of Arizona summer-school students hasn’t yet begun, so the numerous watering holes that dot the street are playing host mostly to locals. This is the case at one shoebox of a bar called Trolley’s, where only…
It took me by surprise. Listening again to “Linger” by the Cranberries, I now heard heretofore undetected bird trills. Actually, this very minor aural revelation wasn’t what startled me. After numerous spins of the disc, I was used to the abrupt emergence of quirky, tantalizing sonics. The band got the…
Rockabilly savant Reverend Horton Heat has an eye on the moral corruption damning the music industry. To wit: “It needs repairing. But it’s not the music,” he says. “I just think there are a lot of mediocre bands that get hyped and somehow end up on MTV. All these unproven…
Rock critics spend an inordinate amount of well-paid time discussing deep, defining issues such as “Independent Versus Major Label,” “Do It Yourself (D.I.Y.) or Have It Done to You” and “Seattle: The Next Liverpool?”. Only rock critics care about deep, defining issues, of course, and nothing ruffles a critic more…
The J. Geils Band Anthology: Houseparty (Rhino) Back in the Seventies, I had a girlfriend who thought the J. Geils Band was the sexiest band alive. She and her normally sensible pals would get together and turn to meringue as they argued over personal minutiae (He looks cute in knee-high…
Three photos of Kurt Ralske lay across my desk. The one on the left dates from 1988, around the time his one-man-band debut, Ultra Vivid Scene, was released by Britain’s 4AD Records. With an utter lack of guile, his gaze is directed straight at the camera. In his crew-neck sweat…
There’s an old deejay friend of mine whose favorite saying is, “If it sells, it smells.” Hypocritical theory or not, I can still appreciate the underlying psychology because everybody digs an underdog, right? We cheer for the struggling artist who has to wait tables and pawn his record collection because…
