As long as there has been music, there have been dance crazes. There are those stemmed in 60’s R&B like “The Locomotion” that were brilliant and duds like the “Hokey Pokey” and the “Macarena.” You can almost hear Holly Golightly cringe at the mention of the latter two dances. “Those…
There were times when Sara Taylor felt like crying. The lead singer of the Canadian dark wave band The Birthday Massacre was overwhelmed by the level of intimacy she experienced with the donors to the band’s crowdfunding of its 2014 album, Superstition. Through Skype, Taylor (who is known as Chibi)…
People flee from the east coast to escape the gloomy seasons. Guitarist Cleo Tucker and bassist Harmony Tividad, the duo who make up the indie punk band Girlpool, left the perennially sunny streets of southern California to experience the unpredictable weather patterns of Philadelphia. It was a bold move when…
A good rule of thumb for music writers is to avoid referencing one band to describe the one you are writing about. The Brooklyn trio Sunflower Bean makes it easy to break that rule. They have a song titled “Tame Impala,” which they admit is meant a reference to the…
Chaz Budnick, better known in music circles as Toro y Moi, just released the upbeat funk-rock hybrid album What For? in April, but it’s the experimental turns he takes in his self-released mixtape Samantha that is getting all the attention from listeners and critics. “The main reason I [released Samantha]…
There was a time when if you told your friends you were going to see a “Janet concert,” they knew without further explanation you were going to see the leader of the Rhythm Nation, or Miss Jackson if you’re nasty. As the years went by, the world seemed to forget…
Last month, I found myself, along with the rest of America, gripped by a strong case of papal fever. Pope Francis’ messages of love and mercy are so stunningly different than previous pontiffs that it’s difficult not to like the 78-year-old Argentinian church leader. Yet when he made his trip…
There is a scene in the film Almost Famous where the lead singer of the fictional band Stillwater, played by Billy Crudup, talks about how with music you “remember the mistakes.” For those who attended the alt-J performance at Comerica Theatre, the few mistakes that were made by the Leeds…
It’s hard to dance with a devil on your back, as Florence Welch exclaims in her band Florence + The Machine’s anthemic hit song “Shake It Out.” Luckily she brushed off that pesky demon long before she took the stage at Ak-Chin Pavilion on a balmy Tuesday evening. The British…
The stage at Comerica Theatre went from pitch darkness to sudden illumination, revealing the presence of Don Henley and the members of his touring band singing “Seven Bridges Road” a cappella. Despite the many calls from the audience throughout the evening for Henley, who’s also the drummer and a vocalist…
An hour after talking with Brandon Flowers, his publicist called me back to ask me to take out part of my interview. First, she thanked me for conducting it so early in the morning and let me know that Flowers had enjoyed speaking with me, which surprised me as he…
For twenty years, Destroyer, led by Vancouver native Dan Bejar, quietly released seductive, critically acclaimed music with his band. Bejar is also known for collaborating with A.C. Newman’s Canadian indie supergroup The New Pornographers as well as other musicians. Albums like Destroyer’s Rubies have songs that are an inside joke…
In the five years since Lizz Wright’s last album, the gospel-themed Fellowship, the jazz vocalist’s life veered in unexpected directions. Wright went through a divorce and a near-fatal car accident. She even started to question her chosen career. “I thought for a while that I really didn’t want to record…
Ben McKee’s decision to drop out of the prestigious Berklee College of Music with only one semester remaining to join Imagine Dragons must have seemed foolish at the time. In hindsight, the bassist for Imagine Dragons (whose members also include singer Dan Reynolds, Wayne “Wing” Sermon on guitar, and drummer…
It’s bad enough to pay full-meal prices for a soda at a concert, but when even the show’s headliner is selling you something, you know you’re being manipulated. Before the popular country artists Lady Antebellum took the stage at Ak-Chin Pavillon on Saturday night, the trio consisting of Hillary Scott,…
The way Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy kept bringing up the heat at the band’s performance at Salt River Fields, you’d think the Deadheads who had descended upon their hometown of Chicago the same night had banished the group to perform outdoors in the sweltering summer heat of Arizona as punishment for…
It’s difficult to get a dream off the ground. Valley native Seth Smades knows it as much as anyone. The 23-year-old singer-songwriter had fits and starts trying to steer his passion for music in the right direction, but none of them seemed right until he and a high school friend,…
Hamilton Leithauser once hollered angrily into a microphone about a former love on “The Rat,” The Walkmen’s signature track. Now he’s sporting a shiny grin for the cover of his first solo album. “I look like a politician on the cover.” Leithauser says. “I just wanted a smiling picture because…
Oklahoma has songwriters Rogers and Hammerstein to blame for the rest of the country’s perception that it’s only a place full of waving wheat and wind sweeping down the plain. Luckily, the Panhandle State can also claim ownership to the intricate, layered sounds of the alt-rock trio Other Lives, who…
For being thrown together at the last minute, A$AP Rocky’s listening party for his latest album A.L.L.A. sure looked like a good time. The festivities, which were held in New York City on Monday, came a week earlier than planned. The rapper tweeted that his second album, whose title is…
“Two words: Margaret Thatcher,” replies journalist and film director Travis Collins, “Sometimes a swear word is included in-between.” The question was what facets of British society inspired industrial music, the topic he and co-director Amélie Ravalec (Paris/Berlin: 20 Years Of Underground Techno) explore in their new documentary Industrial Soundtrack For…
New genres seemingly can appear out of nowhere. Take the case of Miami Horror. When Illumination, the band’s debut album, was released five years ago, the words “indie electronic” were used to describe the Australian quartet. When pressed about the difference between indie and non-indie electronic music, band leader Benjamin…
