Scott Johnson’s new release is a fusion of all that is local. While the Gin Blossoms’ guitarist has risen to national success and recognition, this album truly does feel homegrown. That might have something to do with the album’s being recorded primarily at local studios or, perhaps, it’s a result…
Although fans of his multiplatinum vehicles Tool and A Perfect Circle like to paint him as an arcane, poetry-drunk, Jim Morrison-esque frontman, Maynard James Keenan is one puerile sonofabitch at heart; and with Puscifer, his long-in-the-making solo vehicle, Keenan shows just how dirty (and funny) he can be when he…
Chicago-based DJ Felix Da Housecat takes a journey back to disco with his new release, navigating through sonic textures from that bygone era. Hearing it, you notice that Felix carefully researched the genre when it was at its highest point (circa 1979) and now acknowledges how it influenced today’s dance…
We miss Buck Owens. Genial, shrewd, goofy, and incredibly gifted, Owens shared the pop and country music stage with the vast crowd of ’60s musical wunderkinder. He stood his Top 40 ground with the Beatles, who liked him enough to cover him (“Act Naturally” was Ringo’s signature theme), while performers…
If you like tales of cocaine and depravity mixed with gospel/soul tinges and down-home twang, Old Crow Medicine Show has just what you’re looking for. The members of the bluegrass-meets-blues outfit are fervent — one might even say fanatical — disciples of Gillian Welch’s partner in crime, David Rawlings, and…
Otep Shamaya says, “Art is war.” The singer for her namesake L.A.-based metal-fusion band, Otep, considers herself a revolutionary, and makes art catharsis via visceral screams and songs that sear the ears like hot grease. Her lyrics are laden with apocryphal poetics about religion, politics, love, and loathing; she’s a…
God bless K Records’ tousled-bedhead messes, but it’s a mystery to us what, exactly, Saturday Looks Good to Me are doing on this label’s roster. These Ann Arbor, Michigan-based indie-poppers simply have their “gee willikers” stuff a bit too together, you know? Neither Calvin Johnson nor Phil Elverum had a…
Flashback to a year ago: I’m rolling around in bed one morning, wanting to vomit and complaining about my acid reflux. My young girlfriend is just emerging from the shower when I bellow at her to throw me the Zantac. My door swings open, and a bottle hits me hard…
In an effort to bring a more multi-media music experience to our readers, we’re gonna start posting Wednesday previews of what’s coming up in the week’s print music section of Phoenix new Times. But rather than just pimp our ink, we’re also going to post MP3s, YouTube clips, and photos, to give you a better idea of what these bands actually sound/look like. We want to give a more full-on sensory experience. We want to reach out and touch you. We’re working on scratch ‘n’ sniff links.
Sorry to be the bearers of bad tidings to all you Ingrid Michaelson fans out there in the PHX, but the indie pop singer’s concert — scheduled to go down tonight at Martini Ranch in Scottsdale — was canceled within the last 24 hours.
Just like the prodigal son, Future Shock has returned to give y’all the hook up on the latest “just announced” concerts coming to Valley venues over the next few months. And speaking of comebacks, the biggest news this week was that one of the biggest names in music, Stevie Wonder, will be holding his first concert in Arizona in more than a decade.
Over the past 30 days or so, most of Western world has been busying itself in celebration of the annual phantasmagorical feast of fear known as Halloween. As for me, however, I’ve been having a lot of trouble getting into the Halloween spirit.
It just seems wrong to call Russian émigré Regina Spektor Russian, because her family fled the USSR during the freeing days of perestroika in 1989. This kind of makes her a Soviet-American, even if she might disagree. The point is, Spektor is a product of a collapsed communist empire that,…
Straight outta Sweden comes Witchcraft, which — despite its black-metal name — rocks it fairly old school and classic. The sound these four Scandinavian longhairs have been making for the past seven years combines Blue Cheer/Iron Butterfly psychedelic stomp; early (pre-synth) Rush proggery; the mystic, sun-baked riffage of Kyuss and…
It’s either fortuitous psychic planning or just plain dumb luck that The Green Lady Killers released an EP that opens with a song called “Psycho Ellen” in the same week Ellen DeGeneres cuckooed up the airwaves weeping about a troublesome doggy she couldn’t handle with some kind of Michael Vick…
Thursday 1 Big Fish Pub: Chronik Frequency Thursdays with the Hazardous Crew feat. DJ Ladykilla, DJ Papi Cholo, DJ Spawn, Kyle Wise, AWOL, & Dmok (techno, breaks, electro, hip-hop, drum ‘n’ bass) Bikini Lounge: Sophisticated Boom Boom with DJ HFE (rockabilly, surf, jazz, classic country, indie, obscuro) The Blooze: DJ…
In the recently released Kurt Cobain documentary About a Son, Nirvana’s music is noticeably absent. Instead, director AJ Schnack lets Cobain tell his own life story by splicing raspy narration taken from phone interviews between the musician and author Michael Azerrad with artful, rich scenes of people and places from…
“The pig! The pig! Let’s go see the ‘World’s Largest Pig’!” It’s a rather windy Tuesday night in mid-October, and I have just spotted yet another attraction at the Arizona State Fair that I can’t drag my buddy B-Boy to just yet. Tonight, B-Boy’s all about Weird Al Yankovic, who’s…
This first edition of Weird Al’s greatest hits came out in 1988, but the parodies are such familiar songs of their times that people of any age can appreciate them. Of course, his best-known parodies (“Fat” and “Eat It”) are here, but there’s also Al’s mutation of Madonna’s “Like a…
Any time you try to encapsulate a nearly 40-year-old genre in a four-CD boxed set, you’re going to end up with some holes. With The Heavy Metal Box, Rhino has done a fair job of mapping metal’s 1968-1991 evolution, from the fuzzed-out proto-metal of Blue Cheer’s “Summertime Blues” to the…
On her first solo release, the former Banshee shows us that the influential punk songwriter of the ’70s and ’80s has moved on and evolved musically without losing her edge. Having waited so long to do a full disc of her own, she takes the opportunity to experiment, and the…
Soulja Boy’s entry in the minstrel rap sweepstakes is called Souljaboytellem.com, and it has been virally marketed in a savvy way. Nonetheless, it’s about as stripped-down as a record can be. This is what rap would sound like if it had been invented in the 19th century — simple snaps,…
