Ben Araiza

A former break-dancing teen turned singer-songwriter from Watsonville, California? Can’t wait for the video. Not sure what brings him to the Valley from the Bay Area, but his first album has some likable acoustic rap-rock moments and a particularly angelic female background vocal that makes nearly every number a treat…

Heatstroke

This Phoenix rapper’s all-caps fact sheet states that he’s got “A THREE HUNDRED SONG CATALOG WITH HEATSTROKE CREATING OVER FIFTY OF THOSE HIMSELF,” and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that “OVER FIFTY” is bolded. Despite 50 Cent’s The Massacre becoming a quadruple-platinum album and charting in the Top 5…

Charlie Musselwhite

If only Sam Phillips had said, “If I could find me a white boy who could play harp like Muddy Waters,” rock history might’ve taken a different turn. But rockabilly’s loss is blues’ gain. Charlie Musselwhite grew up in Memphis (and actually ran moonshine, according to his bio), was friends…

Fine China

The first thing you’ll say when you see the band shot on this CD is, “These guys need more sleep and less makeup.” Then you’ll slip on Fine China’s disc and get a solid 44 minutes of first-rate melancholia. It shouldn’t work that singer Robert Withem can evoke such empathy…

Opiate for the Masses

A textbook case on how to do everything the suitable way, Opiate is finally coming out with a full-length on its own terms — on its own imprint label that’s part owned by Concrete Management and Vans Warped Tour/Taste of Chaos creator Kevin Lyman — after negotiating with several majors…

Blue Fur

It should be noted that Blue Fur came in as a finalist against winners Downward Dog in a KALT Battle of the Bands, and similarly, this band seems to have a retro ’80s sound — kind of a quirky Lene Lovich/Suzanne Fellini sound. While you’re looking up those faded names…

Downward Dog

I must say I had fun listening to this record, but not in the way that its creators may have intended. However much hearing Tori Amos changed singer Julia Bogen’s life (as it says on the band’s official Web site), it’s probably the Y Kant Tori Read era that wielded…

Latest PHX Dish

Here’s how our local music scene works: For some inexplicable reason, during the early winter months when we’re enjoying our best climate, not a whole lot goes on musically. Maybe bands are clocking in a lot of time visiting with their snowbird relatives. Then comes spring break, and BOOM! –…

Dramarama

If your short memory of this group begins and ends with its alt-rock-before-it-was-alt-rock hit “Anything Anything (I’ll Give You),” you’re in good company. This Wayne, New Jersey, group relocated to California when “Anything Anything” became the most requested song in KROQ’s history after Rodney Bingenheimer gave it his endorsement (founding…

From Ashes Rise

You wonder how being on a wimpozoid emo label like Jade Tree sits with these Tennessee-via-Portland hardcore erupters — and vice versa, where their PR department has to dispatch terms like “bad asses.” Knowing that these brunos could lay waste to the label’s entire striped-shirt roster with a few time…

Johnny Rivers

Things to think about next time you toe-tap to “Seventh Son”: Johnny Rivers, whose last hit was “Swayin’ to the Music (Slow Dancin’)” in 1977, still continues packing fans into large halls, while his contemporaries slog away in pathetic oldies revues. A savvy businessman early on, he worked an integrity…

April Shouters

T.S. Eliot dubbed April “the cruelest month,” but even The Waste Land neglected to point out that National Humor and National Anxiety Month share the same calendar page. As do National Welding Month, International Guitar Month, and Uh-Huh Month, which might quicken the failing hearts of John Cougar Mellencamp devotees…

Plain White T’s

A brand-new band doesn’t usually wait a couple of years to follow up a debut, unless we’re talking about Audioslave or some other aggregation that’s got a lot of lazy supergroup money lying around. But Chicago’s Plain White T’s managed to let two and a half years go by between…

Mono

If you think this is a reunion of the U.K. Mono-monikered band that won trip-hop infamy with Formica Blues in the ’90s, forget it. But don’t expect to be disappointed — this altogether different Mono is an instrumental band from Tokyo that’s heavily influenced by Mogwai and Godspeed. And who…

Aqui

Yikes, what hath the Darkness wrought? It was only a matter of time before you’d want hammy operatic shrieking delivered by a chick who could scale heights even gonads scrunched up in spandex never dreamed of visiting. The idea of bearing witness to the spectacle of head-splitting Stephonik X and…

Alicia Keys

If you wonder why former Clive Davis wonderchild Whitney Houston is such a mess these days, look no further than current Clive Davis wonderchild Alicia Keys, who has not only excellent pipes but jaw-dropping songwriting skills that she’s been showcasing since age 14. Without the vocal conceit a diva like…

The Tubes

Phoenix’s other gift to theatrical rock, the Tubes, challenged Alice Cooper’s supremacy with their similarly decadent front man Fee Waybill as Quay Lewd. Where Coop would camp it up with a boa constrictor, Quay Lewd would settle for a feathered boa — and more high heels than a random shelf…

Comings and goings on the local scene

Where do underage pirates go when they’re thirsty? To the soda barrr! Or at least that is where Jake Slider and Jason “Ace” McClellan hope underage music lovers will go if they’re thirsting for local music. The co-owners of Neckbeard’s Soda Bar have laid anchor in Tempe and hope their…

Some Other Monster

When the award-winning Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster was released on DVD late last month, it came bundled with a disc of bonus footage. Now fans could enjoy even more whimpering about how fucked up it is being Metallica. More of the band members telling each other off. More…

The Epitaph Tour

Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz started Epitaph Records in the ’80s primarily as an outlet for his band’s records, but soon expanded its scope to include other punk and hardcore bands like L7, The Offspring, and NOFX. Surprisingly, the label’s never mounted a company package tour until now. In the…

Queensrÿche

Calling these guys the thinking man’s heavy metal band may be a lopsided compliment, like identifying Nicole Richie as the brainier one on The Simple Life. But in a field of hedonists like Poison and Def Leppard, worldly Geoff Tate and company distinguished themselves with far weightier themes than the…

Modest Mouse, and Cass McCombs

What else can you say about an indie band that’s suddenly on every TV show still hosting live music? Or about a lead singer like Isaac Brock, who goes on several national shows and doesn’t even try to disguise the big, nasty shiner on his right eye? What happens when…