Music

On any given Sunday in Scottsdale, Old Town becomes something of a ghost town. Although many gin joints and posh watering holes are open and offering libations, the majority of the party crowd generally is at home nursing their hangovers from the night before or resting up for another work…

Aesop Rock is the most prominent of mega-verbose thesaurus MCs, but the veteran rapper has something the others don’t. Busdriver’s pranks are more smugly satisfying, and the proggy kinetics of Themselves more technically impressive, but Aesop creates entire realms with his cascading rhyme schemes. His new album, Skelethon, brought to…

Few things are as American as old-timey string bands. Maybe Huckleberry Finn and baseball, but it’s a difficult task to pick one. Two local string bands, South Mountain Witness and North Brother Island, will pick and bow at Jobot this weekend. The cafe’s wood floors and weathered charm should create…

There’s no shortage of female musicians strutting their stuff on YouTube. Notable Phoenix contributions include Michelle Blades and her ukulele and The Teeets, with their goofy PSAs, but stumbling across songwriter Jackie Cruz’s “Not Me” feels different. Before launching into a grungy guitar riff, she warns she may have ripped…

Like many denizens of Tempe, the folks behind popular UK Thursdays decided to take the summer off for rest, relaxation, and recreation. Now that classes are set to resume at Arizona State University later this month and the college crowd has begun making its return to town, the dubstep weekly…

Brooklyn songwriter Sharon Van Etten has made a brave record in Tramp. And brave records come with brave album covers, and Tramp possesses a great one: a stark, black-and-white portrait of Van Etten’s stoic face. “The artwork is just me trying to be simple and make eye contact,” Van Etten…

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See also: Ten Favorite Playlists at Metro Phoenix Restaurants We like to think we’ve got similar attitudes about music and food: There’s a time for the out-there stuff, there’s a time for the cheap and greasy, and there’s a time for everything in between. Whether you’re into dining on bone…

Photo by Erik HessSee also: Lollapalooza Suspended, Resumed After Dangerous Weather Conditions See also: 10 Things Your Lollapalooza Outfit Says About You By Ian Traas With every year that passes, it feels like electronic dance music gains a bigger foothold in the summer festival circuit, and the climb in popularity…