Scott Herren’s recent work has drawn criticism for sounding too similar to his early breakthrough recordings (particularly Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives). He often uses the same melodies — a soft, melodic arpeggio of keys — on all of his recordings, a tendency that frequently appears on Security Screenings, his…
Seattle sextet The Lashes is the latest contender in a bewildering blitz of earnest-sounding, stylishly dressed haircut bands. Its debut album, Get It, is expert corporate power-pop, hitting all the notes The Killers, My Chemical Romance, and others have already struck. On “New Best Friend,” lead vocalist Ben Clark sings,…
Compared to his pioneering work as a producer, drummer and bandleader, ?uestlove’s DJ career seems modest and unassuming. Live, he usually plays to the people in the crowd (whether they’re VIP glitterati at a posh nightclub or hundreds of enthusiasts at a hole-in-the-wall rock bar), mostly avoids too-rare grooves and…
Sing-Sing’s debut album, The Joy of Sing-Sing, hit stores in the fall of 2002 amidst numerous references to Emma Anderson’s former, much-beloved band Lush. The music didn’t help, either, since it seemed split between multi-instrumentalist Anderson’s shoegaze history and primary vocalist Lisa O’Neill’s own folk-pop background. And I is much…
As an underground hip-hop group from Portland, Oregon, Lightheaded wouldn’t be expected to rap about pimping bitches, but this trio’s subject matter is noticeably clean-cut. Wrong Way, its second album and first since 2001’s Pure Thoughts, features songs about trying to be a better husband (“Eye to Eye”), testimonials about…
Of all the artists that the fan-approved, critically underrated Rhymesayers label has discovered in recent years, Stefon Leron “P.O.S.” Alexander may be the most intriguing. A black punk rocker from Minneapolis, P.O.S. (which stands for “Product of Society,” “Pissed Off Stef,” and many other acronyms) blends together hard rock and…
San Francisco band Film School’s brand of music is an anguished yet expertly resurrected form of shoegaze; it’s Slowdive for the new millennium. One of the tracks from its debut, “He’s a Deep Deep Lake,” sounds as if it were taken from Lush’s catalog, and another cut, “Harmed,” copies Ride’s…
Special Gunpowder is the first original recording from DJ /rupture, a producer who initially caused a stir with his 2001 mix tape, Minesweeper Suite. On that disc, he deftly blended everything from disco classics to hardcore techno and dub reggae tracks, earning widespread acclaim as one of the top DJs…
Hip-hop fans who can’t wait for Little Brother’s major-label debut on Atlantic next year should pick up Foreign Exchange’s Connected. The result of a collaboration, initiated by telephone, between Dutch producer Nicolay and Little Brother rapper/vocalist Phonte, it finds the latter riffing with various MC friends on real-talk issues over…
“I use speech to bust rhymes through a concrete wall,” raps Boston MC/producer Insight on “Evolve,” the first single from The Blast Radius. Insight’s music is meant to hit like shrapnel, dousing the ears in horn stabs, rumbling bass, and careening effects. It bears a remarkable similarity to DJ Premier’s…
In press interviews for his new album, Kiss of Death, Jadakiss, a member of the Lox, asserts that he wants to be thought of as one of the greatest MCs of all time. Though it seems like bravado, the fact that New York’s hip-hop community has taken his statements seriously…
Four years after her last album, PJ Harvey has abandoned the elegant, Mercury Prize-winning slickness that made Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea such an anomaly in her edgy and provocative oeuvre, and frightened longtime fans. Her transformation from angry young girl to elder stateswoman must have scared…
The early word on RJD2’s Since We Last Spoke is that it’s something of a disappointment, especially coming on the heels of the robust, near-heroic Dead Ringer. True, it is willfully introspective and less frenetic than that auspicious debut; there are no headline-grabbing raps by his old crew, MHz, or…
Madlib’s Madvillain project is the second of his dream match-ups, following his slightly disappointing pairing last year with Detroit iconoclast Jay Dee (Jaylib’s Champion Sound). While Jay Dee favors original compositions, track-busting Madlib finds more in common with MF Doom, since the latter’s early-’90s work with KMD as Zevlove X…
With Map of What Is Effortless, Telefon Tel Aviv marks a radical departure from the opaque ambiance of its 2001 debut, Fahrenheit Fair Enough, toward a rich brew of soul and IDM electronics. Much of it, in fact, features the Loyola University Chamber Orchestra, which lends the proceedings a regal,…
At one point on her new album This Is Not a Test!, Missy Elliott defines her style as “old-school rap to old-school R&B.” That’s pretty accurate. Back in the ’80s, when George Clinton and Roger Troutman spiked their funk and disco with synthesizer machines and vocoder, then cut down their…
It’s not easy getting into Jay-Z’s recording home at Bassline Studios, tucked away on West 26th Street in Manhattan. I have to sneak in behind a woman walking into the building, take an elevator to the eighth floor, and knock on a pair of glass doors before a security guard…
These days, any band that ventures into post-rock territory is bound to be compared with Mogwai, which is akin to every trip-hop/down-tempo/chill-out act being written off as a DJ Shadow knockoff. Although Canadian quintet Do Make Say Think shares its Scottish predecessors’ knack for stop-start commotion, the details in Winter…
OutKast’s new album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, is a perplexing work. At times, it is sloppy and appealing; elsewhere, it is masterful and programmatic. There’s a circuslike atmosphere that infects it, a disease contracted from Prince’s overwhelmingly diverse Sign o’ the Times and shared by other overachieving acts like the Roots…
After two years of trailblazing work by incendiary artists like RJD2, Cannibal Ox, and label owner El-P, Definitive Jux has spent 2003 issuing work by the underground’s underdogs, hardworking MCs who have never earned their just due. As a freestyle animal familiar to New York heads, C-Rayz Walz falls into…
Chingy
Chingy’s debut album rides into record stores on the strength of “Right Thurr,” an insanely catchy single full of chest-swelling keyboard melodies. It sounds like the inside of a strip club, spewing out snare effects and lewd drum patterns (inspired by the Neptunes) that twirl and clap like dancers spinning…
There is an austerity to the Lifesavas that some will find off-putting or atypical of underground hip-hop acts. One skit on their debut album, Spirit in Stone, “Thuggity Skit,” clumsily parodies monosyllabic Southern rappers. On “Livin’ Time/Life Movement I,” Vursatyl proclaims, “We pro-life and we’re pro-longevity/Procreation/Produce/Provocative/And pro-prosperity,” while “State of…
