Buzz bands from here, there and everywhere are nicking U.K. sounds, but too many of them are targeting the same period: the early ’80s post-punk days, when it was okay to wear any color as long as it was black, and young men were discovering how much fun they could…
Frances the Mute, the latest opus by former At the Drive-In cohorts Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala, arrived at the perfect time; its fresh-and-wild style filled the vacuum left by a dearth of new musical movements. Too bad self-appointed trend monitors are currently working overtime to pigeonhole the group as…
What to make of the Dead Kennedys’ “Too Drunk to Fuck” done bossa-nova style with vocals by Camille, a uni-monikered songbird who twitters like a tipsy socialite? Is this concept, stretched to album length by the production team of Marc Collins and Oliver Libaus, a silly gimmick? A wry bit…
Right now, Atlantic Records is giving the star treatment to San Diego’s Louis XIV, whose first full-length for the company, The Best Little Secrets Are Kept, hit stores on March 22. But what happens if the disc doesn’t sell 200,000 copies in its first week? Will Atlantic stick by the…
Dr. Dre has discovered a foolproof method for creating superstars. First he casts an unknown with the right profile — in this case, Jayceon Taylor, who hails from Compton, used to deal and has been shot five times. Then he introduces him via a disc whose high-profile producers (Timbaland, Hi-Tek)…
Plenty of scribes have unloaded on The Printz, and it’s easy to see why. This compilation of two EPs is often a mess, with Aussie provocateur Chris Colonna and one-named helpers such as Pia and Surya gleefully engaging in unnatural acts of rock, hip-hop and plenty more, without the slightest…
“I wouldn’t consider us a throwback, but I also wouldn’t say we’re reinventing the wheel of rock ‘n’ roll,” says Ronnie Vannucci, drummer for the Killers. “We’re taking the best parts of the music we were influenced by, putting them in our songs and making them our own.” The Killers…
Darryl Worley’s song “Have You Forgotten?” attempts to split the patriotic difference between Toby Keith and Alan Jackson, waving the flag while showing some class, to erratic effect. The country star deserves points for rhyming “forgotten” and “bin Laden” (it’s certainly better than, say, “income-tax deduction” and “weapons of mass…
If anything irritates Fred Sargolini, half of the hip-hop/electro duo Ming & FS, it’s artists who force themselves to color inside the lines. “They say they’re open-minded, but they’re really puritans,” he says. “And people in drum and bass and all kinds of other stuff do it. It’s like they’re…
Careers in music are seldom predictable, but Ethan Buckler’s has been weirder than most. He first kicked up dust among underground types in the late ’80s as a member of Slint, a Louisville, Kentucky, art-noise outfit whose influence continues to linger. The band broke up around 10 years ago, but…
Reviewers seldom gush over discs that remind them of albums made by lousy artists from the past — hence the dearth of notices praising Shakira for introducing a new generation to the genius that is Charo. But the opposite proves true when it comes to CDs that recall the long-ago…
At this point in its development, hip-hop is all about the marketing. Crossing over to the pop side of the street is incredibly lucrative, but doing so too overtly puts street cred at risk. That’s why acts and their labels are looking for new and creative ways to make the…
Ask anyone, of any age, to name the first album she or he purchased, and you can bet the disc mentioned will be cool: a classic that’s truly stood the test of time. And do you know why? Because people lie. Okay, maybe some of them are telling the truth;…
Anyone who pays the slightest attention to popular music knows that punk rock hasn’t been the typical nihilist’s soundtrack of choice for many years, so don’t bother stopping the presses. But there remains plenty of irony in the degree to which the genre has been mainstreamed. Whereas punk acts were…
Golden is the most modest indie supergroup imaginable. The band sports an impressive underground pedigree. Alex Minoff, who splits singing and guitar-playing duties with Ian Eagleson, has logged time in Six Finger Satellite and the Make Up; drummer Jon Theodore has worked with Royal Trux, Palace and Mars Volta; and…
Perhaps the truest line ever written about Bruce Springsteen appeared in Village Voice scribe Robert Christgau’s 1975 review of Born to Run: “Springsteen may well turn out to be one of those rare self-conscious primitives who gets away with it.” As Christgau implies, Springsteen isn’t the sort of fellow who…
Even before my first spin of Fed to Your Head had ended, I sensed that the album would inspire strongly contradictory feelings, and a brief prowl across the Internet confirmed my suspicions. An online reviewer at www.ink19.com likened Scorched Earth to “a third-rate Lenny Kravitz” and concluded with comments that…
The word “mature” keeps cropping up in positive reviews of this disc —mature songwriting, mature arrangements, mature subject matter, mature performances — and such references are apt. Unfortunately, maturity isn’t the most scintillating quality: It doesn’t quicken the pulse or trigger the endorphins, and can easily slide into less laudable…
Optometry is hardly the first album to mingle jazz, hip-hop and DJ culture. Indeed, it’s not even the first platter to do so on Thirsty Ear. In June 2001, Spring Heel Jack, a London duo that’s rightly viewed as an innovator in the drum ‘n’ bass subgenre, unleashed its own…
One of the least-used compliments in the average critic’s vocabulary is the word “consistent”; few scribes come out of a great concert exclaiming, “That was one of the most consistent shows ever!” But consistency is an important artistic attribute, particularly for a performer who hungers for career longevity, and Duke…
When it was launched in 1995, the Warped Tour was one of many multiband bashes — from H.O.R.D.E. to Lilith Fair — that emerged in the wake of the influential, highly successful Lollapalooza festival. So why, seven years later, are virtually all of these allegedly annual events, including Lollapalooza, either…
Record companies specializing in musical subgenres regularly market certain releases to tourists, literal and otherwise. For instance, blues labels tend to balance albums aimed at consumers who know the form well with lowest-common-denominator platters intended for people who think it would be cool to purchase a blues CD once every…
