Title: The New Millenium ManBasics: San Diego born, RoQ’y TyRaid (né Jacob Raiford) has since moved to Phoenix to try and make his new name. I say new because Raiford was once known as J RoQ, but as he explains on “Vanguard,” “J RoQ is Neo, who was slain /…
Title: So Close Yet So Foreign EPBasics: It’s back to the pop punk grind here at YAFI, thanks to No Gimmick last week and now Russian Arms and Optics this week. Thankfully, RAO’s brand of pop punk isn’t that terrible — there’s is a pop punk with plenty of synths…
Hype can be a double-edged sword in the music industry. If you don’t have enough of it, your music, no matter how good it is, will go unheard before fading away into obscurity. Too much hype, though, and you’ll find it increasingly difficult to live up to it. That is…
Sometimes the anticipation of sex can be just as thrilling as the act. The same goes for MartyParty’s bass, especially heard in concert. His slow, ever-building melodies — constructed with bleeping synths and snare — peak, then pause, before giving way to deep valleys of dubstep bass lines. As a…
Rocky Votolato’s music has a hushed, strummy ambiance and bittersweet, minor key melodies that recall Elliott Smith — albeit with more backbeat and a hint of country. Votolato grew up in Dallas before moving to Seattle for high school, and he blends the disparate sensibilities honed in those cities with…
New Jersey band Streetlight Manifesto is the whole package — all the raucous fun we’ve come to expect from Jersey without the orange tans and irritating accents. Yes, the seven-piece band plays ska punk, a genre that’s irritating almost by default, but they do it so flawlessly that even people…
The popularity of the dubstep scene continues to grow in the Valley. At least four different nights devoted to the bass-heavy genre are operating at local clubs, including Subversion’s Thursday throw-down at Disco, 4301 North Civic Center Plaza in Scottsdale. Anchored by rock star residents HavocNdeeD (the talented twosome made…
Canibus is probably best remembered for his feuds with LL Cool J, Wyclef Jean, and Eminem, but the Jamaican-born rapper has kept busy in the years since those famous tiffs of the late ’90s and early ’00s. Outside of a two-year stint in the U.S. Army, Canibus has remained prolific…
Michael Benjamin Lerner is a Seattle-based indie rock musician who performs under the moniker Telekinesis. Though he was a solo act before hiring two guns for his latest album, his foil on this particular project has long been Chris Walla, a guitarist who plays in Death Cab For Cutie. Walla,…
A story in today’s Arizona Republic should worry all local music fans. The paper reports that Mesa Amphitheatre, a grassy 5,000-capacity outdoor amphitheater has entered a world of hurt as it loses out on big-name acts booked into another city-owned space, Mesa Arts Center, and other competitors.The Republic story paints a picture that’s…
Shake! may have ended two years ago, but the original DJs got together last Saturday to celebrate the dance party’s six year anniversary. The Rogue Bar was packed with Scottsdale’s sexiest and strangest patrons, who resurrected the party once more. DJs spun a mix of indie, brit pop, 80’s rock,…
It looks like there’s a new entry for the brilliant Who Is Arcade Fire? tumblr. Unfortunately, this one is longer than 140 characters — by about a full page in The New York Times. Steve Stoute — CEO of marketing company Translation and a veteran record executive — took to The New…
After listening to the Strokes’ new single, “Under Cover of Darkness” when it dropped, I didn’t set my hopes very high for the rest of the album.The single, which dropped a few days ago, was just ta little better than OK. The chorus, of course, is reminiscent of “Angel of…
Title: Loss For Words EPBasics: I think I was getting far too cocky atop my YAFI perch. Here I was about to collect my two month chip for being pop punk sober. Thanks to power punk trio No Gimmick, I’m off the wagon yet again. I give up — it’s a…
Gear up for this weekend’s Honey Pistol gig at Teakwoods Tavern and Grill in Phoenix with an awesome creative flier of an orange peel frog designed by Jenny Tornado.”The frog that is peeled like an orange and you can see through its body,” Jenny said. “It represents the past several…
Believe it or not, music made by Omaha rap/reggae/surf rockers 311 has been blaring from skate shops and pizza delivery vehicles for 20 years now. With a new album due for summer release, the guys are taking their show on the road for a spring tour. It’s just a warm-up…
Historically, Arizona hasn’t been terribly hospitable to the veteran Filipino-American thrash-metal band known as Death Angel. Is it a “papers, please” thing? Naw. It’s our remote, carnage-strewn highways. In 1990, the band was riding high after signing with Geffen and releasing its first major label album, Act III, when the…
Chances are, if you worked at a record store during the ’90s (remember those places you used to be able to sell your used CDs for actual cash money?) you probably had a discussion with a fellow music geek about which Lou Barlow band was better: Dinosaur Jr. or Sebadoh…
Lucero’s bio reads like one of those feel-good rock ‘n’ roll stories that seem too good to be true. Start with the modest beginnings: A punk-infused alt-country band forms in 1998 in Memphis and puts out a pair of albums on the little-known Madjack Records label, eventually signing with the…
Although they might be loath to admit it, the members of the Valley’s current hipster DJ scene owe a ginormous debt of gratitude to William Fucking Reed (pictured). His highly popular indie dance weekly Shake!, which rocked The Rogue Bar in Scottsdale for five years straight, also proved to be…
If Christopher Walken’s memorable turn on Saturday Night Live as The Continental taught us anything, it’s that there’s nothing better than a fine bottle of cham-pahn-ya. Said lesson was perfectly illustrated when we visited brand new North Scottsdale nightspot Narcisse recently. Valentine’s Day weekend was filled with plenty of action,…
Title: Lesson Number OneBasics: The Father Figures are appropriately named — I don’t know the exact ages of member Tom Reardon, Michael Cornelius and Bobby Lerma, but this photo I saw upon opening the CD case let me know roughly just how old they might be. Usually I cringe at…
