Hip-hop is dead. So sayeth the aged b-boy, so sayeth the flock. Well, it’s not really dead, just different. Most of the people who pine for the Eric B. and Rakim, KRS-One salad days can’t seem to stomach today’s mainstream hip-hop. “Hip-hop died in the mid-’90s,” they claim. Most hip-hop…
Tom Petty’s as pissed as a millionaire gets, meaning you’d best take this, ahem, concept album about rock ‘n’ roll corruption with a grain of salt the size of Mike Campbell’s hair. What happens when this album, financed by a multinational, gets airplay? Will it be considered victory or surrender,…
Armed with only a battered melodica, Damon Albarn set off from his London digs two years ago on a Malian sojourn. There, in the capital city of Bamako and its satellite villages, Albarn met and jammed with local musicians, both pro and amateur. Eventually, he compiled 40 hours of tape,…
In country music, as in rock, the line between commercial and alternative has become fuzzy, as indie-oriented artists found Nashville hungry for good new songs, and smaller labels strove to grab rising talent. The husband-and-wife duo of Buddy and Julie Miller could be the poster children for this phenomenon. Five…
It’s been three years since we last heard from Underworld, the popular Brits who successfully combine elements of techno and house with vocals and melody. Having a singer (Karl Hyde) out in front of the stage undoubtedly helped them gain a foothold in the United States in the mid-’90s, when…
The Athens, Georgia-based duo Jucifer — an alt-metal combo comprising Amber Valentine on guitar and her boyfriend, Ed Livengood, on drums — mixes up a lethal cocktail of punk, heavy metal and plain ol’ buzz-saw rawk, redefining “Southern gothic.” The couple self-released a debut album in 1998 titled Calling All…
When Gogol Bordello’s Eugene Hütz was 14 and living in Ukraine, he caught wind of the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown from BBC Radio. Moments later, he and his family prepared to flee. “I’m trying to think very hard which records I should take with me out of the thousand that I…
This ain’t the way your brother’s indie band made its way. Don’t indie bands play basement parties and warehouse blowouts until all hours, move a lot of merch to the under-21 crowd and become famous on their own terms? Tonight, Dave Jensen, lead singer of Before Braille, is feeling less…
Even though the band has been making music for a decade, people still wonder whether the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion is for real. No matter how hard the band rocks, the same questions linger: Are they making fun of the blues? Are they making fun of punk? Are they making…
On stage, Cephalic Carnage’s Zac spends most of his time swinging his head and guitar, sweating, screaming and abusing listeners with the brutal bombast that issues from his instrument. But today, sitting in his publicist’s office almost 2,000 miles from his home in Denver, there is little evidence of that…
The Apples’ antsy retroactivity has ping-ponged back and forth so many times over the last nine years, it’s become downright dizzying, from ’60s pop to ’80s jangle and ’90s indie. By the time the band released its fourth studio album, 2000’s Discovery of a World Inside the Moone, the Apples…
Unlike many soundtracks that pale creatively in comparison to their celluloid counterparts, 24 Hour Party People more than matches the spirit of the film it accompanies. More impressively, it captures the feel of a bygone era in British dance music. At 18 tracks, this compilation approximates the energy and underground…
Reviewers seldom gush over discs that remind them of albums made by lousy artists from the past — hence the dearth of notices praising Shakira for introducing a new generation to the genius that is Charo. But the opposite proves true when it comes to CDs that recall the long-ago…
Richard Patrick of Filter might be a good moderator for a music-conference panel: “The Hit Single: More Harm Than Good?” The band’s 1995 release, Short Bus, produced a major hit with the single “Hey Man, Nice Shot,” but its overexposure on MTV and commercial radio did not come without a…
Billing themselves as providers of “the only rock from Siberia,” the Russian rockabilly vaudevillians in the Red Elvises have spent the past six years conquering the club circuit with an over-the-top stage show that features an Old Country interpretation of American trash culture. Surfing (“Surfing in Siberia”) and disco (“Closet…
In the beginning of the movie Reservoir Dogs, gangleader Joe, played by Lawrence Tierney, is confused by the discourse taking place around the film’s famous round table. His partners in crime are discussing someone whose name he doesn’t recognize. “Toby?” he asks his fellow diners. “Who the fuck is Toby?”…
The last time Josh Davis was being talked and written about by lots of people he didn’t know, he had just fomented what many of those people had decided would become a fundamental change in the way musicians make records. His debut album as DJ Shadow, 1996’s Endtroducing . …
Her oldest brother, Justin, is the heartthrob of the group. With the perfectly tousled, blond-streaked hair, the model’s eyes and the fashionably pierced earlobes, he’s the one in the foreground of all the photo shoots. The principal songwriter, lead singer and guitarist of the band whose unfortunately pun-intended name appropriates…
Independent hip-hop seems as if it’s edging ever closer to that other kind of indie music, the kind that features pasty, forlorn vocalists delivering ironic, self-deprecating lyrics about love and loss and hurt and fear. At least, that’s what’s going on with Atmosphere’s latest, God Loves Ugly, which reads like…
As captain of the good ship Built to Spill, Doug Martsch wears a lot of hats, and he wears ’em well. One most becoming cap reads “Resident Guitar Genius.” That’s the one Martsch sports most prominently on Now You Know, the first side maneuver released under his own name. But…
When producers Rob Garza and Erik Hilton, collectively known as Thievery Corporation, released their debut CD Sounds From the Thievery Hi-Fi in 1997, it carved out a place for slower tempos in a world dominated by pumping house and hyperactive drum and bass. Thievery’s signature sound — a catchy fusion…
