Phoenix Band Senteons Offers an Immersive Artistic Experience

You think you’re at a show, but as you walk in, you’re greeted by a “doctor,” who takes your cover charge. You’re whisked away from your friends and led into another room, guarded by two “nurses,” who begin to ask you a series of rapid-fire questions: “Do you go through…

The Holy Coast Wants You to Find Inner Peace

Phoenix’s the Holy Coast didn’t exactly intend for the band to have the initials THC, but the coincidence couldn’t be more fitting, says Keith Walker, the synth-drizzled trio’s maestro of beats and programming. Plus, when singer Brett Davis suggested the name after their first jam session, he slowly reached into…

Man or Astro-Man? Back on Tour

Ever wonder what kind of music aliens would play if they made a pit stop on Earth? Maybe dubstep? Droning metal machine music? Lady Gaga covers? Turns out, they’d probably be into a mix of surf rock and punk, as Alabama’s Man or Astro-Man? demonstrate. Claiming to be extraterrestrials that…

How Cosmos, Carl Sagan, and Space Influenced Yellow Ostrich

In the video for Yellow Ostrich’s “Mary,” a young girl dashes through woods, then trips and falls in slow motion. The cover for Ostrich’s fifth album, Cosmos, features a still from videographer Bas Jan Ader tilting sideways, ready to fall. Likewise, the album features a track called “Things Are Fallin’.”…

6 Worst Music Videos Shot in Laundromats

These days, music videos are essential to the whole music making process. It’s one of the easiest, most effective ways to really burn into someone’s head whatever you’re trying to play. It also tends to make your lo-fi Bandcamp “release” more “official.” And the best thing is, these days you…

EMA, Mas Ysa, YUS – Crescent Ballroom – 6/28/14

I’m not sure what went wrong with this show. All the bands were talented, smart individuals, yet it seemed like no one could be bothered to even pretend to be interested. First, this gig started off with tickets around $7, but Crescent Ballroom made the event free, presumably because they…

Jack White’s Lazaretto Is All Gimmick, No Bite

The story goes, Mr. Picasso is sitting in a posh Paris café when he is approached by a young woman. She instantly recognizes the famous painter and begs him to draw for her. He snorts, until the lady offers to pay him. So Pablo whips out his pen, doodles something…

Brussels-Born YUS ?Sprouts Chillwave in Tempe

When you learn that Youceff Yunque Kabal, better known as YUS, is studying accounting and economics, it makes sense how precise and organized his chillwave tunes are. Now he’s released Talisman, his second full-length, not counting three remix albums. It’s the kind of conscientious craftsmanship found in Daphni or Burial…

Is Deafheaven Bigger Than Yeezus?

Someone who compiles these things (Metacritic, apparently) averaged all the reviews for all the records released last year, and Deafheaven’s Sunbather came in at number one. In fact, the album with the starkly pink cover is the seventh-highest-scoring record in Metacritic’s entire database, dating back to 1999. That means it…

Four Simple Ways to Get People to Stop Using Phones at Concerts

I’m still stuck in 2008, being one of the few freaks without a smartphone, so I don’t really “get it.” All I need this chunk of plastic to do is occasionally make phone calls or send text messages. For me, constantly being connected to the Internet would be a living…

tUnE-yArDs – Crescent Ballroom – 6/3/2014

I’ve been to maybe 100 shows at Crescent Ballroom, yet I’ve never seen the place so packed for an opener. Someone screamed, “We’re here for you,” so apparently Sylvan Esso has some fans in town. Their glockenspiel samples and soft, pitter-patter vocals made Esso feel like a modern version of…

Hey, Phoenix — You Need To Start Dancing At Concerts

On a recent trip to Denver (to totally get stoned LOLJK), I found myself in some giant cathedral that was converted into a five-story dance club. Each level had a different DJ and mood, but the bottom had this chill guy and his girlfriend who, before starting a DJ set,…

tUnE-yArDs’ Merrill Garbus Loves Puppetry, and Other Quirky Facts

Following her critically acclaimed sophomore album Whokill, it seems tUnE-yArDs’ brainchild Merrill Garbus was crippled with self-doubt, perhaps gripped by a feeling known as the Imposter Syndrome. As she chirps in her song “My Country,” “The worst thing about living a lie / Is just wondering when they’ll find out.”…

Bacchus and the Demonsluts Bring the Funky Pirate Party

What better way to label yourself Phoenix’s ultimate party band than naming your group after the Roman god of merry-making, theater, getting wasted, and feeling “ecstasy”? Bacchus and the Demonsluts did just that, but its roiling river of funk, jazz freakouts, and frenetic, instrumental jamborees is just the tip of…

How a Single Tweet Launched A Cloud for Climbing

Whether it’s through his digital design work or his post-rock music outfit, A Cloud for Climbing (AC4C), Brock Lefferts has one goal in mind: “organically distorting what is perfect.” In AC4C, Lefferts flies solo, using audio software Ableton Live to manufacture loops and beats for him to play alongside on…

Riff Raff @ Crescent Ballroom

On the cover of his just-released sophomore album, Neon Icon, Riff Raff stands in front of hot pink and blue laser beams clutching a Husky puppy in one arm and a dumbstruck toddler in the other. You might not want the Houston-based rapper to watch your kids or dog, but…

The Dandy Warhols: Twenty Years of Urban Bohemia

Dandys rule, okay? They have never not ruled, they still rule, and I suspect they always will. Turning 20 years old, Portland’s premier rock band, the Dandy Warhols, can claim one of its generation’s most eccentric careers, making the quartet one of the last great rock ‘n’ roll acts in…