Music

If you dig a little digga digga doo, Asylum Street Spankers has a paddle for you. Jazz and swing at the core, the Spankers (a “spanker” is slang for someone who plays an acoustic instrument) will dip into any genre, turning rap songs and television show themes into riotous swing…

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…

Top 10 sellers at Hoodlums (ASU Memorial Union) for May 21 through 27: 1. Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Love Bad News (Sony) 2. Mission of Burma, Onoffon (Matador) 3. Method Man, Tical 0: Prequel (Def Jam) 4. Gift of Gab, Fourth Dimensional Rocket Ships Going Up (Quannum…

Oh, you can count on plenty of blue-hairs lining up to vote this November — the old-lady variety, that is, not the ones surgically attached to a skateboard. Whatever the reason, our nation’s voting-eligible youth simply can’t be bothered to pull the levers on Election Day. Hoping to alter that…

Dashboard Confessional, “Rapid Hope Loss” Discuss (18) Posted: April 19, 2004 03:31 p.m. Rapid hopelos is such an awesome song . . . but then again, any song written by chris is awesome! Posted: April 20, 2004 10:51 p.m. This song seriously blows. These songs are not deep and meaningful,…

The Stills, from Montreal, have the skimpiest backstory of any of the definite-article bands that have won hipster acclaim over the past couple of years. They’re not rich kids, divorcs or Swedish; they don’t wear uniforms or brag about puking up both lungs in all-night benders in Tuscaloosa. Still, Logic…

Pedro the Lion front man David Bazan is, without question, a member of America’s emo-rock fraternity: He records for genre clearinghouse Jade Tree, there’s a picture of a cuddly lion on the cover of his new album, and he called his first CD It’s Hard to Find a Friend. But…

Uncle Kracker (otherwise known as Matt Shafer) was at the brink of divorce when he was pulling double duty as a solo artist and Kid Rock’s DJ. But dropping out of Kid Rock’s Twisted Brown Trucker Band has injected new life into Kracker’s voice. It’s given him plenty to write…

In the video for his new single “Whatever It Takes,” Ron Sexsmith makes his way through a sea of delicately disco-dancing young people; a couple of times he even gets close to shaking a leg himself, presumably moved to motion by the song’s gorgeous soul-pop sparkle. Singer/songwriterdom needs more of…

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…

Marques Wyatt made a pilgrimage to New York City in 1984 that not only changed his life, but changed West Coast dance music; Wyatt returned with the roots of the soulful, spiritual house music that would define his legacy. Now, the creative force behind L.A.’s legendary monthly party DEEP, born…

Like pop homunculi, the Kinks obsessives who have crowded up indie scenes for nigh half a decade are missing something essential in the souls. Their chirpy lilts and out-of-place Britishisms exist in a habitat largely bereft of weight, wit or variance. New Pornographers honcho A.C. Newman (a.k.a. Carl) has transcended…

The early word on RJD2’s Since We Last Spoke is that it’s something of a disappointment, especially coming on the heels of the robust, near-heroic Dead Ringer. True, it is willfully introspective and less frenetic than that auspicious debut; there are no headline-grabbing raps by his old crew, MHz, or…

No British rapper has a bigger hurdle to overcome than the Streets’ Mike Skinner. His second full-length, A Grand Don’t Come for Free, comes two years after the critical and fan favorite Original Pirate Material, an album the “British Eminem” used to turn the world on its collective ear, with…

69 Love Songs, the Magnetic Fields’ three-disc adventure in pop-music dilettantism, was the point where the antiquated past (jazz, blues, standards, chamber music) crashed into the space-age future (synth-pop). Five years after 69, on his band’s seventh disc, MF front man Stephin Merritt has ditched synthesizers completely — an unfortunate…

As a co-founder of the fiercely lauded sketch comedy program Mr. Show, David Cross may be the only comedian working today who has the cult stature and intensity to not seem out of place on the indie rock label Sub Pop. It’s Not Funny, his second album, has all of…

We used to be a British colony. We threw ’em out, they got over it, and more than two centuries later, Tony Blair stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Dubya, bragging about the two countries’ “special relationship.” The U.S. and the U.K. have had a long and productive cultural conversation. Nowhere is this…

Sure, William Shatner’s done T.J. Hooker, VH1’s One-Hit Wonders, and those damn Priceline commercials, but he’ll always be Captain Kirk to us. And speaking of one-hit wonders, the Los Angeles glam-industro-metal outfit Orgy is always gonna be the band that did “that New Order song.” Coming out of the box…

J.J. Cale moves to the beat of his own drummer, and invariably it’s a blues shuffle, the laid-back snare snap mirroring his laconic vocal delivery. Just as Cale takes his time musically, the ethos extends to his career. It was more than a dozen years between the young Tulsa native’s…

Every copy of Let’s Get to Second should come in a Land o’ Lakes box; Chomsky’s national debut practically drips with butter. Vocal doubling reaches levels that would make Elliott Smith roll in his grave, and the beefy mix sometimes drowns out lead guitar and synthesizer parts. Those changes may…