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,…
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…
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…
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…
I Saw Sleigh Bells at Crescent Ballroom — Now I’m Forever Glittery
Rap music and country music — two distinctly different genres that don’t go together, right? Maybe in the past, cuz, but it seems like the hybridizing of the two are happening more and more in recent years. Brad Paisley and LL Cool J collaborated on last year’s track “Accidental Racist,”…
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…
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…
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?)…
Craig Morgan, apart from stopping every other minute to either express gratitude or share a laugh, can call to mind the archetype of the male country star — years in the game, a rack of number one hits, a massive song in current rotation. Morgan doesn’t run by standards, though:…
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…
Summers in Northern Arizona are some kind of magical. I spent my childhood helping my dad load our battered red farm truck up with alfalfa bails, unloading them under building monsoon clouds, racing from the barn to the house as the rain fell, hay hooks in hand. As idyllic a…
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…
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…
You may know Cassadee Pope in one of three incarnations: There’s the former frontwoman of Warped Tour pop-punk outfit Hey Monday, the winner of NBC sing-off show “The Voice,” or the country act with a gigantic range and a penchant for breaking records only previously set by one Ms. Taylor…
PHX AM After Party feat. DEATH The Pressroom 4/5/14 The PHX AM After Party, sponsored by local board shop Cowtown Skateboards, is always an interesting happening. Over the years, the company has put together some of the more eclectic shows to hit the Valley in celebration of one of the…
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts Cyclefest at WestWorld 4/4/14 Iconic rocker Joan Jett played a solid set of old favorites and new tracks as she and the Blackhearts got the party started Friday night during Cyclefest at WestWorld in Scottsdale…
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…
Philadelphia’s The War on Drugs began as the home-studio project of Adam Granduciel – an unrepentant tinkerer and gearhead whose deeply layered songs put a new spin on classic rock. After the breakthrough success of the expertly crafted Slave Ambient, Granduciel’s project became more of a live band, a move…
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,…
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…
Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite, Dwight Yoakam, G. Love, and More McDowell Mountain Music Festival 3/30/14 I love music festivals for one simple reason: there are always surprises. And the final day of McDowell Mountain Music Festival 2014 on Sunday was filled with said surprises for the eyes and ears…
