There’s a faint buzzing in the air on the day I sit down with Nanami Ozone to hear the band’s demos from their debut album. It’s an overcast, sleepy haze — the sky is tuned to static — and drummer Mo Neuharth is fiddling with her vintage stereo. While the…
Supposedly, there is a war on Christmas, and Thanksgiving might bring about your family’s dark, alcoholic side. But no holiday divides the nation quite as bitterly as Valentine’s Day. In the red corner, you have those who must reluctantly conjure up greeting-card-style devotion to their indifferent significant other. And in…
Rum Drinker may write songs about tropical paradises and “SNES Heaven,” but the band’s Shangri-La just happens to be Sunnyslope, the Phoenix neighborhood wrapped around Nouth Mountain. The lo-fi surf punk quartet is fronted by singer/guitarist Josué Rodríguez and keyboardist Paris Tejas, a couple who met in Portland but now…
Psyko Steve Chilton’s Rock Lottery (scheduled for Saturday, January 16), now approaching its third year, is one of the more brilliant ideas to take hold in the local music scene. There is nothing quite like the exhausting task of shuffling some two dozen musicians together, forming random, new five-piece bands,…
Looking for something to do this weekend? Look no further. Here are the best concerts happening this weekend. Check out our comprehensive concert calendar for more options. Kottonmouth Kings – Friday, December 18 – Joe’s Grotto Twenty-one years after Kottonmouth Kings’ humble beginnings in the Orange County town of Placentia, it’s…
Music videos are more important now than they ever were. As the music market has saturated with bands, anything that makes an artist stand out from the crowd becomes vital, and music videos are a great way for artists to distinguish themselves from the masses. Luckily, video technology is so…
When Don Diego de la Vega, better known by his masked nom de guerre, Zorro, invented his alter ego in a pueblo in Los Angeles, he did so “to avenge the helpless, to punish cruel politicians” and “to aid the oppressed.” It can be said that Chicano Batman, a four-piece…
It’s hard not to think HEALTH is more mechanized than Kraftwerk ever could have dreamed. The Los Angeles quartet teethed itself on the abrasive thrash of New York noise rock bands but committed to harmonic balance with trademark melodic synth licks and singer Jake Duzsik’s distant, unaffected voice. With a…
Not all dudes with acoustic guitars are created equal — just ask Frank Turner. Ever since rising from the ashes of post-hardcore outfit Million Dead, Turner has enjoyed a successful solo career spanning six studio albums, including the recent Positive Songs for Negative People. The English singer-songwriter has bounced all…
When the Salt River Project dammed the reservoir that would become Apache Lake, it probably didn’t predict the area would become host to one of the most unique music festivals in Arizona. While the Grand Canyon State is home to many giant rock and EDM fests, like Viva PHX and…
Judging from the band’s album cover art alone — blobbish landscapes, overgrown hedges, phallic mounds of food — if nothing else, Battles understands texture. The New York threesome snubs genre with its mix of instrumental post-rock, intricate math rock, and complex, creamy rhythms. There is the raw propulsion of Holy…
Here are our picks for the best concerts in Metro Phoenix happening Monday through Thursday of this week. For more options, check out our comprehensive concert calendar. Turnpike Troubadours – Monday, October 5 – Marquee Theatre The world is rapidly waking up to Oklahoma’s Turnpike Troubadours, whose new self-titled LP…
For years, I volunteered at a radio station, where my job was sorting the massive pile of albums mailed to us every week. We’d pick songs we liked, making sure they were scrubbed of non-FCC-approved words like “goddamn motherfucker,” then lump them under labels such as “rock” or “jazz” for…
With a self-titled album coming from local minimal art imprint Moone Records, and by taking on a darker, more mature and full-bodied sound, it’s taking every effort to resist saying “Pro Teens are growing up.” Indeed, the sextet have come a long way since their singles “Puberty” and “Teen Feels,”…
One of the original members of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Matt Hollywood was an influential element of the San Francisco neo-psychedelic rock band from 1990 to 1998, responsible for favorites like “Oh Lord,” “Maybe Tomorrow,” and “Got My Eye on You,” among others. Prolific, psyched-out, practically unknown — to say…
I was trying to remember the last time the Trunk Space was this packed. Perhaps when Kimya Dawson played the Indie 500 in April, but probably not even then. At any rate, the very first show for Okilly Dokilly, the “metal” band themed after the bug-eyed neighbor from The Simpsons,…
Here are our co The Donkeys – Friday, September 4 – Valley Bar The Donkeys, not to be confused with the late-’70s power pop band from West Yorkshire or the Japanese noise rock outfit, have a solid fan base in Phoenix, prompting these Californians to visit about once a year…
It’s been a really weird year for Robbie Pfeffer. As frontman and lyricist of scuzz-funk five-piece Playboy Manbaby, the guy is someone you’d expect to be a little weird. After all, this is a band that writes wacko songs called “Falafel Pantyhose” and sings about minivans, neck tattoos, and “Pulsating…
If you’re headbanging on stage and happen to smack your bass with your skull and split open your forehead, splattering blood all over yourself, what do you do? If you’re Metz’s Chris Slorach, it’s a no-brainer: You duct-tape that shit and keep going. The musically abrasive Toronto trio is bloodied…
From Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s explosive beginnings — the band’s first single, “Ffunny FFrends,” went viral a mere six days after its posting — to its present-day musings on love’s boundaries, the indie “dreamfunk” quartet is a band that continues to reinvent itself. The group’s third album, Multi-Love, exposes a more…
The most punk thing about punk is that punk can mean so many, many things. It is an amorphous concept that even I don’t dare pretend to fully comprehend. But when you know it, you know it. And the Melvins with Le Butcherettes at Crescent Ballroom was pretty fucking punk…
Nothing says ’90s nostalgia like a band that made it big during the dot-com boom, releasing two chart-topping albums, only to face constant struggle in the age of Napster and American Idol. When Eve 6 emerged in 1998, the group revealed itself as a smarter Blink-182 and a less self-pitying…
