Holy Saturday, Batman. Walk around anywhere in downtown Phoenix this weekend, and you’ll find music. With concerts at Civic Space Park, Portland Parkway, CityScape, and all the usual venues like Crescent Ballroom (which has a slew of great shows this weekend), you’re pretty much guaranteed to have a good time…
Dear J Mascis: First of all, I am a big fan. From the first time I heard Dinosaur Jr back in the late 1980s to this very day, I have been a little awestruck. Your career is one any diehard music aficionado can respect. The first time I drove down…
Need some new ear candy? Here are four tracks brought to you by locals to get you grooving…
We don’t blame you if things happen to be a little hectic this month. There’s the last of all those Halloween decorations to remove (not to mention all that candy to polish off), warm clothes to get out of storage, and the whole holiday season only a few weeks away…
Matt Korvette of Pissed Jeans is used to hearing noises like static and feedback, but our phone conversation started off with too much of what is normally a good thing to the band’s lead singer. The Allentown, Pennsylvania, noisy punk(ish) band makes its first trip to Phoenix on Friday, November…
Some matches are made in heaven — others, like Run The Jewels, are made in the murky, underwater trenches of underground hip-hop. Named after a verse in LL Cool’s J “Cheesy Rat Blues,” RTJ swerves like a great white shark — sleek as hell, just don’t get caught in those…
Earlier this year, we announced a concert photography contest. We received more than 46 submissions, and a crack panel of judges winnowed down the submissions to 10 finalists. We are now introducing you to each photographer, presented in random order. Next up is Christopher Mark…
We totally got to party with a robot in Scottsdale a few weeks ago. True story. Well, we’re pretty sure it was a robot, but admit that it might’ve been a dude in some shiny, vacuformed plastic armor. (We also may have been a few drinks in at the time.)…
Roger Clyne sits at a table at Four Peaks Brewing Company’s Tempe stronghold, and he’s about three beers into an afternoon dominated by Pumpkin Porter. Through the patio speakers, Coldplay’s “Yellow” comes on. When the song came out, Chris Martin’s reedy, thin falsetto crooning “your skin, oh, yeah, you’re skin…
Due to space limitations, we couldn’t include every part our conversation with Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney, who’s coming to US Airways Center on Monday, November 10, in our print feature this week. Our story focused mostly on Carney’s outspoken stance on the need for streaming music services to pay…
You’ll often hear about how the Arizona State University downtown campus has revitalized downtown Phoenix, but you rarely hear credit given to the other demographic whose growing presence in the area has thrived: Latinos. From gourmet cuisine to hair salons that become art galleries at night, there’s a sense of…
Take a look at the following quotes about digital music and try to guess which came out of the mouth of Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich during the Napster days and which came from Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney a few weeks ago while talking to New Times. “It has nothing…
Mary Lambert has never held anything back in her music. She burst onto the pop scene in a huge way as the out-and-proud hook lady on Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ smash “Same Love.” Lambert performed the hit at the Grammy Awards earlier this year before Madonna joined her onstage, just…
Authenticity is a loaded word when it comes to country music. Nearly every modern country act likes to shout out “real country fans” in arenas, even the ones pumping out bombastic party anthems about red Solo cups, shaking asses, and jacked-up pickup trucks. Then there’s the historical struggle of standard…
Sometimes, no amount of coffee or marijuana can help you from lying around a dingy house instead of being able to write. I wasn’t excited about Yelle. I almost considered not going at all. But I’m glad I forced myself to get out because this show was possibly the best…
It’s tempting to refer to 2014’s Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave, the Twilight Sad’s fourth LP, as their return-to-guitar-rock record. Their last full-length effort, 2012’s underrated No One Can Ever Know, was saddled with a similarly reductive byline: their synthesizer record. Both are accurate-ish, but…
Earlier this year, we announced a concert photography contest. We received more than 46 submissions, and a crack panel of judges winnowed down the submissions to 10 finalists. We are now introducing you to each photographer, presented in random order. Next up is Joseph Abbruscato…
It’s mid-afternoon on Friday, October 24 when an unidentified member of the Danish underground post-punk/hardcore buzz-band Iceage finally answers the group’s mobile phone. “Oh! You want to talk to my friend Elias, don’t you?,” he cheerfully says, referring to Elias Bender Ronnenfelt, Iceage’s 22-year old singer, who bears a striking…
November brings the best of both worlds to the Valley of the Sun — temperatures have finally fallen below 90 degrees, and some of our favorite metal band’s touring schedules are still in full swing. It’s that time of year where we can leave those sweaty mosh pits and emerge…
The story is not altogether unfamiliar: A couple guys get together to play music, tour the folk festival circuit and have a little fun. Suddenly, the duo becomes a full band, a song gets significant radio attention, and record labels come knocking. That’s part of the back-story for Canadian bluesy…
Another month is on us. The Arizona State Fair has wrapped up, capping off an extremely good concert series with an epic old-school hip-hop show. Gone are the marquee names the state fair brought in October, but November ain’t looking bad, either. Check out our picks below for this week,…
Jimmy Eat World’s recent Arizona appearances have all been special, and Thursday night’s was no exception. The band’s sold-out show at Marquee Theatre was less intimate than last year’s mini Arizona tour, The Rock Lottery, or Jim Adkins’ solo Christmas show, but hearing Futures in its entirety with a two-part…
