Now with their hot-selling Let It Enfold You, the avenging emo-nerds of Senses Fail are gonna put all you mean girls in your place. When they’re empowered, like on “Cute When You Scream,” they might “take you to the top of this building and just push you off/Run down the…
Isn’t science remarkable? You can drop a laser beam on a silver disc and be musically transported back to some circa-1958 VA hall, slow dancing to the sound of a smoky-voiced gal accompanied only by her upright bass, some lonesome pedal steel and some minimal snare brushwork, all wrapped up…
They didn’t put Aberdeen on the musical map with their 1987 debut — it took Nirvana to do that. All the same, the Melvins’ place in rock cultdom is assured for being the first post-punks to make it safe to like slow and plodding metal bands like Black Sabbath. Arguably,…
If you’ve sat alone in a Starbucks, if you’ve wandered aimlessly in a Borders bookstore, if you’ve gone shopping anywhere after 9 p.m., you’ve probably been quietly assaulted by Norah Jones’ octa-Grammy-winning music and perhaps felt like you should be home doing something nice for yourself (the similar comfort zones…
I hold in my hands the newly mastered Stereotyperider album, Prolonging the Inevitable, on a CD-R, the Sharpie permanent marker ink barely dried, with no artwork or bio or anything. Fine by me — my ears tell me this is a seismic follow-up to their debut, Same Chords, Same Songs,…
If you lived in Manhattan during the ’80s, it was almost unthinkable that you could go out to a club or bar and not hear the blues. The generous called it a blues boom, but aesthetically it was a blues glut — too many musicians playing too many shuffles in…
Inexplicably, La Tarea’s nine-song demo finally found its way to this column two seasons after the local shows it was sent in to promote. Pulling back the shroud of mystery deflates the fun somewhat, but know this — Chris, Cory, Devon and Sam are young. They are gifted (Devon can…
A punk rock club with its own record label promises great things, and that’s just what Rogue Records — named after the Scottsdale nightspot — aims to do. Of course, its first release by The Half Empties isn’t going to reinvent the punk prototype of loud and fast tunes, but…
There’s a reason crime and punishment stories work best in an antiquated setting. Bloody jpegs of a crime scene can’t match the romance of sepia-toned photos of outlaws staring blankly into an uncertain future. Even the preferred weaponry from the digital age, like an automatic weapon or a stun gun,…
One thing we know about this lineup of punky malcontents is that they don’t want George W. Bush to become president again. In order to achieve this aim, they’ve all agreed to put aside all bipartisan spitting and mosh-pit shoving for a cause they can all rally behind — good,…
I vote for change — to this lousy bill! It doesn’t bode well for Arizona’s image in the national arena that the rest of the country (the “battleground states”) gets Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, R.E.M., the Dixie Chicks, Pearl Jam, and the Dave Matthews Band for this…
The glorious thing about playing Chicago buzz band The M’s debut for the first time is that it captures the thrill of discovery that the band itself must have had upon hearing its first home recordings. Coming together from the remnants of several blown-over Windy City pop bands, the group…
October 2003. You usually don’t find this many miscreants in the parking lot of Jugheads on a Sunday morning. You’ve got some rough trade in spiky leather jackets, a crying Indian, three-card-monte hacks, a pair of trailer-trash beauties, a tow-truck operator with Wolverine sideburns, a pool shark with a nasty…
Dear Bebel, It has come to my attention that you’re making it a little too easy for the general public to perceive you as a Portuguese crossover artist — seven of the 12 songs on your new self-titled album are sung in (shudder) English. Clearly this is in direct violation…
Sure, any group can record 10 unhappy tracks in a row and call it an album, but it takes truly accomplished visionaries to make 10 miserable songs into a riveting audiomovie you’d stay to watch the credits for. To the guppies, misery isn’t just a mood, it’s an expansive landscape…
You don’t hear many kids saying they want to be in an adult alternative band when they grow up — and no wonder. Unlike punk, ska, metal, industrial and prog rock, adult alternative is perhaps the only genre based not on rebellion but rather redistribution and revision. It’s where people…
When Dan Stone took his video camera to film the North Side Kings’ July 3 show in Tuba City, he hadn’t counted on capturing heavy-metal history. The Valley hardcore band didn’t get to play because Danzig, the headliner, went on at 10 p.m. instead of the originally scheduled midnight slot…
For his long-awaited follow-up to Under the Crazy Hat, Tempe guitar virtuoso Joe Myers, his artist/writer wife Casebeer and their two children set up shop in a legendary New York landmark for little more than a year, until the events of 9/11 cut short their stay. It’d be hard to…
If there weren’t asshole junkies and layabouts, Danny Marianino and company would have precious little to go on a tirade about. Lucky for us, there seems to be no end to the supply of good-for-nothings hanging around the social hall. This third effort goes further out than the band’s last…
Like a trip to the dentist, most bands put off making an album for as long as they can. It’s a put-up or shut-up moment that forces a band to stare at its prospects for success in the cold, harsh light of day — and few are ready for the…
With VH1’s I Love the ’90s mere weeks away from airing, it’s officially okay to long for the decade when the record industry co-opted college rock and ran it into the ground with predictable noise merchants. But it does seem an odd time for a still-new group of Phoenix punkers…
Although some would have you believe our local music scene is deader than Tony Randall, consider that two new bands have migrated here: Tramps and Thieves (from Detroit and Minneapolis) and After Any Accident (from Blacksburg, Virginia), an intense power trio that blends the smarty muso sound of math rock…
