Once again, it’s a sort of apprenticeship with Woody Guthrie that’s drawn Billy Bragg into a new realm. Thirty years since his debut, the seven-song Life’s a Riot with Spy Vs Spy, Bragg is back with a new album, Tooth & Nail, which came out Tuesday on Cooking Vinyl. Bragg…
Usually, people move from places like the middle of nowhere to big industry cities like New York and Los Angeles to find musical success, and stay there. Not the other way around. But for former Guns N’ Roses manager Alan Niven and his wife Heather Vincent-Niven, finding solace in Arizona’s…
Unlike many New Wave acts, Depeche Mode has managed to withstand the ravages of time — more or less. See also: -Depeche Mode Is Coming to Phoenix; Shadowplay to Pay Tribute This Weekend…
With his 12th solo album set for release, it’s as good a time as any to revisit the question: Who is Bob Schneider? It’s not an easy question to answer, however. Though Schneider has carved out his own unique niche as an artist, he’s always been difficult to define, straddling genres, finding a bit…
What’s up with Eric Clapton in 2013? A glance at the past reveals the future. Clapton came to prominence in the mid-1960s British blues scene and quickly became a god. He took psychedelic music to new heights with Cream and Blind Faith, then managed to issue some of his best…
Mod Sun — Dylan Smith to his mom — is happy. We’re talking the kind of abnormally smiley and positive guy-you-want-to-punch-in-the-head-on-a-bad-day kinda happy. But on an average day, there’s no doubt the dude’s high energy and organic optimism can be downright infectious. Which is precisely why the 25-year-old stoner MC began making music he describes…
You’ve got to give mad props to a band that supports its frontman even after the group disintegrates. Such is the case with Chris Wallace, former singer of the now-defunct The White Tie Affair, who has found more mainstream success on his own than his band ever did. While TWTA…
Unlike many New Wave acts, Depeche Mode has managed to withstand the ravages of time — more or less. Despite all the personal drama that’s afflicted the members of the iconic British synthpop ensemble — ranging from drug addiction to near-fatal health issues — the band and its moody, electronica-laden…
Twenty-five years ago, the Phoenix hip-hop scene was virtually nonexistent. That’s when Irin Daniels — taking the name IROC — got involved, and since that time, he’s become one of the most respected hip-hop entities in Arizona. If you have had any semblance of a hip-hop career in this state,…
Editor’s Note: It’s not every day that a band capable of filling arenas headlines a gig at the (comparatively) intimate Marquee Theatre. But that’s exactly what’s going down tonight, when the Bieber-bashing, ¡Uno-¡Dos!-¡Tre! -releasing Green Day heads to Tempe for a sold-out show. Critical consensus can be pretty mixed when…
Chances are, if you’re a weekly reader of Metal Mondays here at Up on the Sun, you don’t think of metalheads as thickheaded, grotesque, and crude Neanderthals. You know metal fans can be smart, erudite, and witty. Still, among the pop masses, there’s a prevailing attitude that metal listeners are…
By now, you know the scoop regarding New Times’ Carnaval Eléctrico at Crescent Ballroom: It rained — a lot — but performances by pop princes Diners, the soulful Stan Devereaux and the Funky Suns, hard rockers Mergence, garage kingpin Hanni El Khatib, indie combo Cold War Kids, and more, made…
It’s not easy being beautiful. Just ask Zac Pennington, frontman of experimental pop group Parenthetical Girls, whose vocal strains fall halfway between Perfume Genius and Lightspeed Champion, complemented with the baroque pop stylings of Belle and Sebastian. Pennington, known for his gender-neutral lyrics and his Morrissey-borrowed wit, pens some brutally…
When March rolls around, the bum rush of SxSW season is a boon for Phoenix: All the West Coasters streaking toward beer-soaked Austin need gas money to brave the barren west Texas stretch, often resulting in mass pit stops in the desert. Rampage Fest, organized on a spotty year-to-year basis…
Ryan McPhun of The Ruby Suns describes the tour for his latest album as “a live rock band approach to not-live-band rock music.” His fourth Ruby Suns album, Christopher (released in January on Sub Pop), is indeed a synth-laden futuristic pop album, highly polished and danceable. But McPhun made the…
There’s plenty to suggest Larry “Mud” Morganfield is the second coming of legendary bluesman Muddy Waters. First, there’s the look: that contorted expression when he sings, eyes closed and face scrunched up like a wrinkled Shar Pei. There’s the perfectly balanced mustache riding on top of his upper lip. Then…
Fadil El Ghoul — better known to dance floor princes and princesses as R3hab — is relatively new to the EDM game, breaking out in 2008, right as the genre began to experience a seismic shift in popularity. A proponent of “Dutch house” style, there’s a distinct menace to R3hab’s…
With apologies to the Paul Oakenfolds and John Digweeds of the world, the realm of electronic dance music has become more a domain for the young in recent years. So much so that it if your average bedroom producer wunderkinds haven’t conquered Beatport or Hypem with their remixes, inked a…
Following up last year’s New Times Soundcheck, a two-day festival at Club Red in Tempe — which featured performances by The Love Me Nots, Sugar Thieves, 2 Tone Lizard Kings, Jason Devore, The Insects, Crusher Sound System, and more — was a serious task. But challenges are cool, right? Up…
Mill Avenue is always busy on the weekends. Just try to find a parking spot among the partying coeds and crazy cab drivers and you’ll know what we mean. Luckily, the ladies of Arizona’s Roller Derby know how to push through a crowd, like they did when they hosted a…
Nathan Willett of Cold War Kids says that when it came time to make the band’s new record, the forthcoming Dear Miss Lonely Hearts (due April 2), they decided to play less to what the band “should be” and more to what it “could be.” “I feel like we started…
Singer Stan Devereaux has been playing R&B and soul in Arizona since the 1960s, growing up in Tucson before exploring the Phoenix soul scene after college, then departing for Europe, South America, and Georgia. His journey led him back to Phoenix, and since he’s settled into a groove here in…
