Broken Bells – Marquee Theatre – 4/10/2014

Broken Bells Marquee Theater 4/10/2014 There’s a line from the LCD Soundsystem song “Drunk Girls” that resonated through Broken Bells’ show last night at the Marquee Theatre: “Drunk Girls know that love is an astronaut / It comes back but it’s never the same.” It was clear that the duo,…

5 Weirdly Memorable Sounds from Classic Arcade Games

Classic arcade games didn’t really have music. Unless it merited a spot on Buckner & Garcia’s Pac-Man Fever, the best a machine before the videogame crash of 1983 could hope for was two or three measures that would stick in your brain long after you’d committed every last beep to…

Top 5 Concerts in Phoenix This Weekend

If it seems like everyone you know is hitting the pavement this weekend for some big festival, it’s only because that’s exactly what’s happening. There’s the first weekend of Coachella out in Cali, of course, as well as Country Thunder down in Florence and KUPD’s UFest over in the East…

8 Cover Songs Made Famous by Jason Aldean

Country megastar Jason Aldean doesn’t front a tribute band insofar as we can tell. An argument could be made otherwise, considering the number of cover songs the crooner has performed and recorded during his storied career. Whether or not fans are aware of it, some of Aldean’s biggest hits were…

25 Must-See Phoenix Concerts in April

The month of April is packed wall-to-wall with concerts. Check that, it’s packed wall-to-wall with great concerts. Some of the bigger hitmakers and tastemakers in pop and indie rock — Lorde, Bastille, Lana Del Ray, Grouplove, Phantogram, Chvrches … just to name a few — will all perform around the…

Easton Corbin Keeps It Simple and Stays Effective

Country music is all about the storyline, and the path of least resistance, lyrically speaking, often makes for the best tales-turned-songs. Easton Corbin, the Floridian behind hits like “All Over The Road” and “A Little More Country Than That,” is a man familiar with this model, using it to his…

Broken Bells a Wholesome Collaboration

When it was announced in 2009 that James Mercer from The Shins and producer Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton were going to collaborate under the moniker Broken Bells, it seemed like another interesting experiment in a year glutton with odd collaborations (Monsters of Folk, anyone?)…

Thompson Square Focuses on Giving Back and Writing Together

Fresh country acts are typically more concerned with gaining staying power, Twitter followers or radio spins above all else. For Thompson Square, the Nashville-based husband and wife duo composed of Shawna and Keifer Thompson, their first intention was something a hell of a lot more admirable: They immediately set out…

Top 5 Concerts in Metro Phoenix This Week

It’s a good time to be a music fan in Phoenix, particularly those who dig both indie and country. Thanks to our fair city’s plum position along Interstate 10, numerous bands bound for Indio, California over the next couple of weeks are swinging through the Valley on their way to…

Miranda Lambert Finds the Time to Reflect

In an era of canned, saccharine pop country that’s characterized by love songs and songs of love lost, there are few musicians that can make a statement quite as well as Miranda Lambert does. The Texas native has morphed from reality show contestant into superstar over the last decade, releasing…

Top 5 Metro Phoenix Concerts This Weekend

Curious about what’s going on around town this weekend? Need some suggestions as to how to rock, dance, or krump in the Valley of the Sun? Don’t fret. We’ve got the hook up on what shows you might be interested in attending over the next couple nights and days. This…

Detroit’s Forgotten Protopunks Death Are Back From the Grave

The world never cared about Death. Until now. In the early 1970s, before even the long-revered “godfathers and godmothers of punk” were trailblazing the genre, the Detroit trio was doing it first (and quite well, for that matter). But nobody outside of sibling band members David, Dannis, and Bobby Hackney,…

10 Things We Learned at McDowell Mountain Music Festival 2014

This year’s McDowell Mountain Festival went off like a weekend in the park, and we mean that both figuratively and literally. Perched upon the green grass of Margaret T. Hance Park, the three-day concert fest seemingly took place without a hitch and happened to feature gorgeous weather and a lot…