David Lowery lost his share of fans when he followed his days at the helm of one of independent rock’s most willfully eccentric acts — Camper Van Beethoven — with Cracker, a far more conventional roots-rock band in slacker-rock clothing. Of course, as often happens when your second act is…
If there is a downside to the huge commercial comeback that American Idiot spawned for Green Day, it’s the way that comeback only reinforced the notion that the band had somehow lost its bearings after Dookie sold, like, 40 billion copies — when, in fact, the records from the oft-neglected…
If you’ve ever found yourself up in the clouds (for whatever reason), you’d probably run into Portland psychedelic-rock trio Menomena while surfing the heavens. The music marvels have transcended the mere experimental rockers of the band’s first album, I Am the Fun Blame Monster (2003), and climbed to the next…
Universal revived the Republic logo — last seen in the ’30s and ’40s for a series of B-movie Westerns — for Mellencamp’s new album, and it ain’t a bad match. Like the cowboy heroes of yesteryear, Mellencamp still believes that hardworking, honest people can eventually triumph over the forces of…
Melechesh’s geography — which involves being a thrash/black-metal band from Israel comprising Armenian, Assyrian, Dutch, and Ukrainian musicians who’ve relocated to Europe — makes for an interesting story, but it becomes doubly curious when you consider that the band’s material fixates on ancient Mesopotamia. These are no Sumerian dilettantes, either:…
The opening track wastes no time living up to everything this latest reinvention from the desk of Damon Albarn promised — Danger Mouse pushing the post-Lee Perry echo like The Clash in Sandinista! mode, with pulsing reggae bass from The Clash’s own Paul Simonon and Albarn at his soulful best…
While your iTunes playlist is doubtless clogged with songs by bands well-suited to their noms de plume, Philly/NYC quartet Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is that rare act whose name describes the desired effect its music will have on listeners. Frontman Alec Ounsworth’s uneven squawk recalls Talking Heads’ David Byrne…
Well, oy vey!, opa!, and oh my gosh!, here’s a world-music collective that plays an enchanting blend of Gypsy music (two of the five members of Fishtank Ensemble actually traveled across Europe in a caravan as Croque Mule) and other exotic styles, including klezmer, polka, punk, flamenco, classical, and rock…
Watching Young Love mastermind Dan Keyes wriggle his hips behind the microphone as he yelps, “If you get the chance/You must dance dance dance” on the R&B-tinged “Find a New Way,” one would never know that he used to be a member of an emo band. Keyes, formerly the moping…
“I write my life as it progresses, as it gets worse — whatever,” says Aaron Yates, who headlines Friday at the Marquee Theatre under his nom de plume, Tech N9ne (Blaze Ya Dead Homie opens the show). “I’m like a fan inside this cat called Tech N9ne who writes this…
The jokes about tentacles and ink could write themselves, so we won’t bother. What we will do, however, is note how gleefully the members of Austin’s Octopus Project plow through their glitched-out, post-rock instrumentals. Armed with an arsenal of toys, keyboards, drum machines, and samplers, spouses Josh and Yvonne Lambert,…
Good evening, ladies and gents; this is your captain, DJ M2, speaking from the record deck. I’d like to welcome you aboard Club Vibe, 3031 East Indian School Road, for Sound Trip, where tonight (and every Friday at 9 p.m.), I’ll be piloting y’all on a fantastic voyage through the…
The ’80s are back, and Tricky Bizzniss is surfing the new New Wave thing with a sound that’s a bit electro, but more self-consciously retro. Singer Trixie Reiss was the voice of The Crystal Method’s smash debut, Vegas, while producer Ernie Lake was one half of Soul Solution (the duo…
Cballa I’m trying to count the ways that local Westside rapper Cballa annoys the shit out of me. Let’s start with calling your record Blacc Hitla. Because I’m a writer and by proxy an aspiring grammarian, the misspelling bothers the shit out of me. Now, I understand that urban street…
The dorks in Illegal Substance The other afternoon I was sitting in one of my local watering holes and the B-52’s “Rock Lobster” came on the satellite radio. I had to walk outside; that song and its ilk turn my stomach and make me puke a little bit in my…
Smokescreen Just received a CD and e-mails from the local band Smokescreen, and I’m torn between two opinions about its marketing strategy. I like the band; it sounds like lush late-’90s alt-rock in the vein of Radiohead or the Pumpkins, but not too clone-esque. Here’s the strategy though: the band…
I’ve been following hip-hop since I first heard Run-D.M.C.’s King of Rock album when I was 11 years old. I’m not a fanatic, though; my sneering, hip-hop-obsessed DJ friends will tell you that. They just recently schooled me in hyphy, the cartoonish — and kind of silly — Bay Area…
We liked the Scottsdale club life so much last week that we thought we might hit up a new hot spot, the Cherry Lounge & Pit in Tempe, on Friday, January 26. Mill Avenue was lively and teeming with drunkards when we trekked our way to the popular drinking destination…
It’s a chilly Saturday night downtown, and I’ve just met up with my friend Toxic JuJu to take in “The Phoenix Symphony Orchestra Performs the Music of Led Zeppelin” concert at Dodge Theatre. I didn’t know what to wear for this — do I throw on some jeans and a…
Joe Ely was born along the Rock Island line in Amarillo, three blocks from Route 66. At age 6, he witnessed Jerry Lee Lewis pounding a piano on the back of a flatbed truck. In his early twenties, he picked up a hitchhiking Townes Van Zandt, the now-mythical Texas folk…
In an interview with Celebritycafe.com, John Paul Jones said that someone asked him if he didn’t think The Sporting Life had a Led Zeppelin influence. He replied, “Don’t you think Led Zeppelin has a John Paul Jones influence? I was a quarter of that band.” Indeed, Jones never seems to…
When Taylor Swift first hit Nashville, she faced competition from many aspiring female country stars with beautiful faces and large voices. She had bigger ideas. “I had to figure out a way to stand out and be different. For me, that came through songwriting,” she says. As writer of 11…
