Plenty of bands profess bizarre origins, but few are quite as violent as Samuel L Cool J. According to the Phoenix-based group, lead vocalist Haendel Balzora and rhythm guitarist Joel Marquard teamed up after assassinating each other’s respective gang leaders, “Bernardo” and “Tony.” Instead of the electric chair, an extremely…
Plenty of bands profess bizarre origins, but few are quite as violent as Samuel L Cool J. According to the Phoenix-based group, lead vocalist Haendel Balzora and rhythm guitarist Joel Marquard teamed up after assassinating each other’s respective gang leaders, “Bernardo” and “Tony.” Instead of the electric chair, an extremely…
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…
I Saw Sleigh Bells at Crescent Ballroom — Now I’m Forever Glittery
Like many jam bands, Sound Tribe Sector 9 (STS9) leave no sound unturned, no rhythm unexplored, and no genre unappreciated. Everything from jazz fusion to hip hop beats to funkadelic licks to psychedelic twists gets represented on the Atlanta-based group’s 11 album catalog (with another on the way) birthed from…
St. Vincent & Noveller Orpheum Theatre 3/18/14 Downtown Phoenix’s Orpheum Theatre is kind of a surreal place, as the stunning concert hall blends both the past and present in grand fashion. And St. Vincent deserved to perform at no other venue in town, as her show on Tuesday evening was…
A hazy night with Hot Rock Supa Joint, Arizona’s premier stoner rap wizard, begins with a hazy idea. Let’s smoke a joint from the Bob Marley bong. A joint bowl! It only works about halfway, so we give up and give my five-foot BuddyBong a try, so named because it…
A hazy night with Hot Rock Supa Joint, Arizona’s premier stoner rap wizard, begins with a hazy idea. Let’s smoke a joint from the Bob Marley bong. A joint bowl! It only works about halfway, so we give up and give my five-foot BuddyBong® a try, so named because it…
Why does brilliance so often offer a dichotomy of two contradicting personas? You won’t likely get an answer from Annie Clark, better known as the gentle fierceness behind St. Vincent. She’s keen to keep you at arm’s length, but whether it’s shyness or mania that compels her to shroud her…
YACHT, Nite Jewel, Painted Palms, Bogan Via Viva PHX Crescent Ballroom 3/7/14 Let’s just be honest here: Viva PHX, at its very heart, was an attempt to mimic Austin’s South By Southwest. (Even its promoter Charlie Levy essentially admitted as much to us in a recent interview). And that’s not…
Dee Dee Penny, founder and frontwoman of Dum Dum Girls, is known for her shy disposition. She’s probably also tired of hearing about it in the press, but only one second into our phone call, it’s obvious how reserved, quiet, and thoughtful she is. The way she speaks is absolutely…
Dee Dee Penny, founder and frontwoman of Dum Dum Girls, is known for her shy disposition. She’s probably also tired of hearing about it in the press, but only one second into our phone call, it’s obvious how reserved, quiet, and thoughtful she is. The way she speaks is absolutely…
It’s 2014 and high time you got some new music into your playlist — seriously. And that’s doubly true when it comes local music, of which there’s an abundance in metro Phoenix. The Valley’s music scene is gifted with burgeoning bands and emerging artists who will be making waves and…
Some people will do just about anything for a shred of acknowledgement from their pop idols. For Arcadia High School student Matt Peterson, that meant filming himself naked on Camelback Mountain with his no-no area obscured by a foam twerk finger as he asked his celebrity crush Miley Cyrus to…
It’s 2014 and high time you got some new music into your playlist — seriously. And that’s doubly true when it comes local music, of which there’s an overabundance of in Metro Phoenix. The Valley’s music scene is gifted with burgeoning bands and emerging artists who will be making waves…
What happens when you take 20 well-known (to varying degrees) local musicians, shuffle them around, and give them only 10 hours to start a band? Crescent Ballroom decided to find out, hosting the Phoenix Rock Lottery on Sunday night. Not only was this a pretty damn cool idea, it benefited…
It’s understandable if you believe end of the year “Best Of” lists are largely self-indulgent, because it’s fucking true. Music critics write for other music critics and no one else. When the musicians in question sometimes actually read the review, it’s largely by accident. All of us writing simple bullet…
Screeches cycle through the drone and reverberate off the cratered concrete walls of [venue name redacted] as Fake Snake frantically claws through their set. We’re out among the dilapidated shitholes of Phoenix’s industrial parks, inside this warehouse shed doubling as crashpad and venue for several underground acts. Here, the Phoenix…
Benjamin Franklin warned that small leaks can sink great ships, meaning you should sweat the small stuff. But for the progressive math-rock quintet that borrowed Franklin’s aphorism, it’s mostly been one big leak after another. Two nearly fatal car accidents — one involving a motorcycle, the other a Vespa –…
One of Hermann Hesse’s lesser known collections, Wandering, reflects on anxiety, death and the arts while aimlessly meandering through the countryside. Alt-folk singer Bryant Eugene Vazquez left Flagstaff, Arizona barely two months ago to ramble on to Philadelphia, but he’s still releasing records here in the desert. On his latest,…
Wherever it is along the sonic plane that shoegaze collides with post-rock, Montreal quartet Besnard Lakes thrives, cooking up haunted, atmospheric sprawls that tickle the introspectively inclined. Their fourth release, Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO, also marks their third nomination for the Polaris Music Prize. They have yet to win,…
How Emby Alexander learned to love the cassette tapes trend and how they may have captured the Phoenix Lights in their latest video.
