Music

A band that calls its album Examples of the Cataclysmic is obviously thinking big. Walter Alias, a Kansas City transplant from Branson, Missouri, describes its sweeping sound as “cinematic,” and it’s not hard to imagine the quartet’s swelling choruses set against some critical moment in a movie about the apocalypse,…

Last year, in these very pages, I noted that the fabulously suave, poetic, and pillowy English band The Clientele “pulls off the rare, swell trick of reminding you of literally dozens of artists — the late Arthur Lee, Dream Syndicate, Mercury Rev, Felt, Lightning Seeds, Galaxie 500, Nick Drake, The…

Here’s a news flash: Fridays are pretty old and busted, while Thursdays are the new hotness. In fact, we’ve been rapidly burning up our sick days lately by starting off the weekend one day early (shhh . . . don’t tell our bosses), and a fave destination has definitely been…

Last month’s YouTube phenomenon — Alanis Morrisette’s parody of “My Humps” — revealed what we all suspected, that Fergie’s ode to her lady lumps just doesn’t stand up to lyrical scrutiny. The marvelous thing about last year’s YouTube phenomenon, Obadiah Parker’s acoustic revisiting of Outkast’s “Hey Ya” superimposed over the…

Some bands wear their influences on their sleeves. Phoenix trio Emperors of Japan are no exception, but the quirky group has altered its attire. The Emperors wear many clothes. For example, “Reptile,” the opening track to the band’s first album, opens like an old Cure song, with spacy, dreamy keyboards…

The late alto saxophonist Jackie McLean was infamous for a rich and powerful tone, a heroin addiction, and being the dude who nearly stabbed iconoclast Charles Mingus after the big bully bassist punched him. But one thing overlooked during McLean’s career — due to the relatively restrained modal jazz compositional…

Jim Fairchild explores modest arrangements on his debut as All Smiles, finding mostly memorable hooks in airy, acoustic guitar-driven folk pop. Ten Readings of a Warning is Fairchild’s solo outing; his former gig as a guitarist for West Coast psych-pop troupe Grandaddy ended last year. Although he’s a strong singer,…

If you believe in reincarnation as torture, then imagine all the A&R people who, in past lives, signed nothing but copycat bands and reality show winners, returning to this world only to be demoted to the publicity department, being handed a headscratcher of an album like Priestbird’s debut In Your…

The Los Angeles coeds in Silver Daggers bring the apocalyptic no-wave party ruckus, and then some: They’re a viciously exuberant counterpoint to like-minded labelmates Coughs. On the quintet’s latest adrenalized outing — New High and Ord, on Load — frontwoman Jenna Thornhill unleashes incoherent, bloodied-throat cries from the crazed center…

RJD2’s The Third Hand is the kind of alternative hip-hop record that raises the question: When does a particular artist stop being alternative anything and start to step outside the confines of a single genre? What’s even more impressive is that RJD2 did it all himself — the producing, the…

It’s been a whirlwind couple of years for Franklin, Tennessee, punk-pop quintet Paramore. Signed to Fueled By Ramen in 2005, their debut All We Know Is Falling came out in the summer of that year, and they’ve been on the road pretty much ever since. Led by fetching red-haired teenage…

Both of these acts offer a fresh feminine perspective in genres with an overabundance of “masculine” posturing and one-dimensional angst while also refusing to draw attention to their “femaleness” for its own sake. Indeed, Morgan Lander and Candace Kucsulain, frontwomen for Kittie and Walls Of Jericho, respectively, strike a fine…

John “JB” Bigham, the mastermind behind power trio The Soul Of John Black, has a remarkable résumé. For almost a decade, he played guitar and keyboards with Fishbone, contributing to three of the band’s best albums. He’s written songs for Miles Davis and played on the jazz legend’s last studio…

May is shaping up to be a pretty killer month for Valley drum ‘n’ bass fanatics. In addition to the brand new weekly event SEEN! Wednesdays blasting out plenty of supertempo beats and jungle jams every hump day over at Coach & Willie’s, a superstar-studded slate of d’n’b deities will…