There’s a never-ending supply of the young, loud and snotty picking through the rock trash heap, but the legions of glam punk godfathers are few. While many of his peers lived fast and died young — or simply settled into comfortable obscurity — singer and guitarist Jeff Dahl has maintained…
While shrieking, hanging-from-the-rafters front man Ian Svenonius and groovy bassist/chanteuse Michelle Mae led the Vespa-riding, white-belted indie kids in a gospel yeah-yeah revolution with The Make-Up during the late ’90s, their latest act, Weird War, has evolved — or is it devolved? — into a purveyor of glorious psych sleaze…
This Minneapolis indie favorite is tuning in loud and clear to the ghosts of a lost era in rock — those few precious years of the late ’70s and early ’80s, before punk, New Wave and goth all went their completely separate ways. Ouija Radio cranks out darkly catchy melodies…
Last year, in the dead of summer — you know, the time of year when the sidewalks are still too hot to touch at midnight, and the heat sucks the sweat right out of your pores — Robbers on High Street played the very first show of their West Coast…
Now that the pale-skinned, fragile-voiced young singer-songwriter from Omaha, Nebraska, has been put on a pedestal with Bob Dylan after 10 years of quietly releasing records as an indie Boy Wonder, it feels like we know everything there is to know about Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst. Media hype is a…
Rock critics can’t resist calling Of Montreal “sunny,” and there’s plenty of truth to that description. Since 1997, the Athens, Georgia-based band has put out seven albums of whimsical pop psychedelia that plays with shimmering, sophisticated layers of guitar and keyboard melody, over-the-top vocal harmonies, surreal lyrics, and unpredictable arrangements,…
At least another hour is left until touring headliners The Perceptionists are set to perform at the Old Brickhouse Grill on a recent Saturday night, but there are already hundreds of people in the house. When a startling siren blasts through huge speakers and a dense swarm of fans crowds…
Sure, the Japanese pop culture spectrum has an abundance of too-adorable kitsch (Hello Kitty’s only the tip of the iceberg) countered by an incredibly dark side (just Google the word hentai). But what’s even more fascinating — and somehow a little less familiar to foreigners — is the stuff that’s…
While you may not hear an obvious Smashing Pumpkins influence when listening to Stiletto Formal, the Phoenix indie-core band says it gets all gooey over Corgan and crew. On its MySpace profile, the band declares that the Smashing Pumpkins are one of their collective favorite bands. Good thing, too. Stiletto…
Which came first, our iPods or our eclectic tastes? It wasn’t all that long ago when music lovers picked a team and stayed loyal to it. Hip-hop heads devoted their eardrums to rhyme and beats, punks immersed themselves in . . . punk. If you were a fan of, say,…
Two First Fridays ago, xrayok played in the parking lot outside Fate restaurant, glowing in a blue spotlight and framed by inky black tree branches shaking in the wind. A storm was about an hour away, threatening the party vibe, but the band plugged in anyway, and the irresistible opening…
Some things only get better with age. Looking back at the 10th annual New Times Music Showcase, which shook up Tempe’s Mill Avenue last Sunday, April 17, it’s clear that local music fans have not only made the event a tradition, but stepped up their support more than ever. With…
When Dave Ramsey decided to start a local indie record label 10 years ago, he helped spawn the cult of Flathead. The beloved Tempe rig-rock trio released its debut seven-inch (“Alcohaulin’,” still a crowd favorite at the band’s shows) on Ramsey’s Truxton Records, and later cemented its stature as the…
It’s hard to imagine a concert that can handle 50,000 fans a day completely selling out, but that’s what happened at last year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival for the first time in the event’s brief history. And this year, with another jaw-dropping, nearly 80-band lineup that boasts headliners…
Bare-shouldered girls with asymmetrical haircuts and slouchy boots roam in pairs, while shaggy rocker boys in tee shirts and tight jeans wander the sidewalks in packs. Waiting in line outside of clubs among the messenger-bag-and-cell-phone-toting industry types, there’s a higher than normal presence of Japanese girls and lanky, bearded dudes…
Tegan Quin is happy to set the record straight about some things that have been written about her and her sister Sara. Their band, Tegan and Sara, is really a five-piece, not just a duo. Being identical twins does not make them one entity. Their sexuality is a non-issue because…
What began as a quiet gallery stroll is approaching full-blown street fair now that thousands of regulars clog Roosevelt Street on the first Friday of even the hottest Phoenix month. Walking a block can take strategy and patience, because the art isn’t just in the crowded galleries anymore. Recently, countless…
It’s going to be a beautiful Apocalypse. That is, if San Diego trio Via Satellite’s new album, Cities Are Temples, is the soundtrack. A stunning ode to love in the end times, opener “Seven Winged Lions” begins with a bell-clear laptop melody that unfolds into dreamy percussion, snippets of squelch,…
The liner notes to Batter the Drag’s self-released debut EP, unfathomable depths, give an ominous first impression. There are no song lyrics, no names or faces of musicians — really, no real notes to speak of, aside from a list of people thanked by the band, a spare, black-and-white splatter…
Casket Life’s latest press release jokes that the Tempe punk quintet’s plans for 2005 include heavy drinking, but it’s clear from the band’s brief résumé that time spent at the bar hasn’t gotten in the way of kicking ass onstage or in the recording studio. Since forming less than two…
Cindy Dach, 38, who co-founded the eye lounge gallery/ artists’ collective with her husband, photographer and public arts advocate Greg Esser, talks about the couple’s latest labor of love, Writers’ Bloc, a California-style bungalow just off Roosevelt Row that soon will be home to downtown’s first writers’ collective. While Cindy…
It wasn’t all that long ago that Torry Jasper, Jonathan Kelly, Johnny Abdullah and Adam Rodgers were ordinary high schoolers in Peoria. But now with graduation out of the way, they’ve moved on to some out-of-the-ordinary things with their polished melodic hardcore band A Change of Pace: getting signed to…
