A gold mine for Daniel Johnston fans and a great introduction for folks curious about the mentally troubled but gifted songwriter, The Early Recordings Volume 1 gives Johnston material previously only available via cassette or download a proper release. The double CD oozes Johnston’s odd universe, including pages of Daniel’s…

Following a new album of spaced-out orchestral pop called Built on Squares, the Starlight Mints are fresh from touring the country — not Phoenix, though, like too many other good bands — with fellow Norman, Oklahoma, residents the Flaming Lips. Since its 2000 debut The Dream That Stuff Was Made…

At first blush, Fat Cats and the Clubhouse don’t seem to have anything in common. For starters, Fat Cats is housed in a historic building in a rough arts district in downtown Phoenix; the Clubhouse sits in a Tempe strip mall. But both have opened at a time when the…

Deerhoof singer Satomi Matsuzaki’s ultra-high voice sounds something like what would come out of Wayne Coyne’s mouth if he weren’t a man. She is by turns Nico-cold and Hello Kitty naive, and her lyrics sound like bizarre, lost-in-the-translation Haiku. The experimental Bay Area band’s repetitive song fragments appear held together…

Years in the countryside tend to mellow a fellow. It clearly worked on Matt Sharp, who materializes from a four-year hiatus with a haunting acoustic four-song EP titled Puckett’s Versus the Country Boy. If you didn’t know Sharp played bass for and co-founded Weezer and created the New Wave pop…

Matt McAuley, the guitar-playing half of A.R.E. Weapons, says the unusual band name came to him in a dream. “In the dream, [singer] Brain [F. McPeck] was a futuristic Blade Runner detective, and he had like a Philip Marlowe office and the name on the door was A.R.E. Weapons,” says…

Dwight Yoakam first became known in the mid-80s as part of the new-traditionalist movement in country that included the more mainstream artists Randy Travis, George Straight and Vince Gill. The rise of these new traditionalists was a reaction to watered-down country they felt relied too heavily on pop elements, and…

Bust out the black light and the downers, Dead Meadow is here. An unlikely and largely unsuccessful merging of early Pink Floyd psychedelia and Sabbath’s dark metal, Dead Meadow’s music is mostly a bum trip. The music on Shivering King and Others represents an interesting idea, one even the modern-day,…

Cheer up, kiddies, the circus is in town. Art-rock freaks Sleepytime Gorilla Museum are coming, with their “this is what it might sound like to have an enjoyable seizure” sound. Sleepytime must be heard to begin to be truly understood, but here goes a modest attempt: An art supergroup of…

Fruit Bats are yet another example of a side project eclipsing a musician’s once main commitment. The Chicago band was first created to give head Fruit Eric Johnson (no, not the Archers of Loaf guy or the rad guitar rocker) an outlet from his main band, the now defunct and…

These Bastards earned permission to use the Man in Black’s name from Johnny Cash himself, and while they are not really his blood, they do offer up a nice helping of working-class outlaw country that some of Johnny’s cronies ably could have made in the 1970s. While BSOJC have taken…

Jim James answers his cell phone on a very windy Sterling, Colorado, evening, about 140 miles from his band My Morning Jacket’s next gig in Boulder during a stop to get some grub. The limited food choices find the band settling for self-explanatory diner Country Kitchen. James, bandleader, songwriter and…

Come on — stop that Noize! Firmly in the “what th . . .” category, Quiet Riot has decided to tour, gracing us at, you guessed it, the Mason Jar with its wacky homogenized heavy metal. Quiet Riot is basically famous for two reasons: losing founding guitarist Randy Rhoads to…

Sorry to say it, but Silver Lake sounds like Vic Chesnutt light. The veteran singer-songwriter’s southern gothic has gone quasi-gospel, his delicate imperfection and haunted airiness glossed over. A full band of musicians leaves its stamp all over the recording, which, if memory serves, includes the only wicked guitar solo…

There’s an old barroom joke. It goes something like this: “He was the greatest bluesman that no one ever heard of.” Bob Corritore may just know that guy. Heck, with Corritore’s uncanny knowledge of traditional blues, he probably knows the musician’s second cousin, too. He can tell you all about…

“Wow! Look at all that pornography, material waste of photography/When all you need is a fertile mind to formulate pictures of any kind.” from “All You Need Is a Fertile Mind,” an American song-poem. Fans of “outsider music,” from Harvey Sid Fisher to Ken Nordine, unite and embrace the pretty…

Before the Heartgraves had a name, and when they were just five guys in search of a little alchemy, they were having an early Friday evening practice in member Jonny Bionic’s duplex apartment. Bionic’s neighbor had become accustomed to music from next door; Bionic would often practice with other musicians…

Gogogo Airheart defies clear description. Hooray, them! But here goes: GGG Airheart is lo-fi, smart-art rock — electrifying and mysterious. Old and new simultaneously, the music is moody and off kilter. You may laugh at the unusual musical fusions upon first listen to their new release, Exitheuxa, but by the…

Musical royalty can be a dodgy thing — think second-generation Zappa or anyone beyond Hank Sr. But Bobby Bare Jr. appears to be the real deal. Junior is the son of Bobby Bare, who can list among his many musical accomplishment 50 Top 40 country hits. It is clear his…

In the last five minutes, after the microcassette recorder is turned off and the interview is over, Nate Ruess, vocalist for the overnight success that is the Format, predicts a humorous Behind the Music ending for the Valley band, equating the songwriting duo with the decidedly un-tragic demise of Wham…

“There was one fight called Soup vs. Sandwich.’ Basically like a can of soup fighting this sandwich, essentially. A totally weird, weird sporting event.” John Schmersal, creator of Enon, is talking about a show his band played in Boston a few months back. They opened for something known as the…