This week we decided to report on a record store in the deep south. While typically our charts go to the indie shops rooted in CenPho and Tempe, we thought it important to note that people in Chandler buy records too. This week the folks that shop at Zia Records…
T.I. hasn’t just give up the guns since he’s been out of prison. The rapper has also come out with an uplifting single, “I Got Your Back,” featuring Miss Keri Hilson.The duet is a sweet love song about a couple who has weathered tough times and come out stronger because…
First rule of parenting: don’t put masks on your kids that make them look like elephants.Apparently the parents of this little lady featured on the flier for local punk band The Jitters! didn’t care about making their daughter look as creepy as possible, as she’s donning what appears to be…
Adam Lambert has the vocal range of James Blunt and the Maybelline-boosted looks of a young Lisa Rinna. And that — combined with a man-on-man kiss here, an onstage pelvis-to-face grinding there — makes the American Idol runner-up a truly one-of-a-kind specimen in today’s hypersexualized pop music zoo. Critics have…
Electro-rockers Paper Tongues got their lucky break before they were gigging around their hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina — something that doesn’t happen often in the fickle music industry. Brian West, who produced Nelly Furtado’s Whoa Nelly, invited the band to Hollywood three years ago after discovering their music on…
The influential New York indie-rock band Versus, which made two highly regarded records in the 1990s (Secret Swingers and Two Cents Plus Tax), was last seen in 2000 and assumed lost forever. Now, the Merge label — having quite a year with consistently solid records by Spoon, Teenage Fanclub, Shout…
Sometimes these concert previews aren’t the cakewalk they may appear to be. It’s always a challenge to write with some authority about a band you’ve never heard of, especially when said band is a Tucson punk rock outfit with little presence on the Internet outside of the obligatory MySpace page…
Is it really so hard out here for a pimp? After becoming the first and only rap group to win an Academy Award (“Triple Six Mafia: 1. Martin Scorsese: 0,” host Jon Stewart memorably cracked), the onetime Memphis crunk legends seem to have done rather nicely for themselves. First, the…
As if they were the anti-Wavves, Brooklyn’s Beach Fossils wring from their kick-back, lo-fi stoner beach pop impossibly clean, intertwining guitar lines that loop and loop and loop and . . . Well, they loop to the point that, as you listen, you feel as though you were lounging on…
Mr. Fitzsimmons, as I stare at the blank Word document on my computer, I am determined to write about your songs. Not your Katy Perry cover and not your beard — as long and as impressive as the latter is. I bet folks write a lot about that beard and…
Semi Precious Weapons frontman Justin Tranter is definitely a party animal in the third degree. Poke around the Internet and you’re bound to find gossipy accounts of his after-dark exploits of drinking, DJing, and debauching with the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Kate Moss, and Perez Hilton. The androgynous and outrageous…
Well, kids, it’s been a long road of late nights, wild parties, and ridiculous conversations with drunkards. But it’s time to say goodbye because this is the last of Club Candids you will see from this writer.Don’t worry, the lovely Adriane Goetz will continue to snap photos of unsuspecting club…
Dear Conor,Open letters about SB 1070 are all the rage right now, so I’m writing you one. I enjoyed the letters you and Arizona promoter Charlie Levy exchanged a few weeks ago and I thought your essay on the topic was thoughtful and sincere, though dead wrong.Anyway, I’m writing because…
Revolver Records is often known for having some of the more unconventional lists for their ten best selling records of the week. (Once, their #1 slot was occupied by recordings of street music from an outdoor market in Morocco.)This week, indie cool takes over, with Ratatat on top, The National…
Even though Sean “Diddy” Combs is much better at producing train wreck television (Making the Band) then he is at rapping, for some reason, his horribly monotonous track “Hello Good Morning,” by Diddy-Dirty Money, is still getting radio play, and it’s not even a song that is lady-friendly in the…
Title: Two track sampler.Basics: Young Scottsdale upstarts A Second Goodbye have a seven song EP on the horizon, but for now we have a two track sampler CD to satiate those pop punk needs. Pop punk is too widespread and vigorous these days to try and figure it all out…
Perhaps it’s not that evident for a casual observer, but this week is painfully slow for new music releases. It is my job to select one album that comes out every Tuesday and find some reviews of said album to post on Up On The Sun for my Review Roundup…
When your band plays a brand of music called “zombie jazz,” you’ve got to come up with a flier that is just as hypnotically creepy to promote your summer tour. That’s exactly what Brooklyn, N.Y.-based band Father Figures was going for with the creation of this epic poster, which advertises…
“Yes, I’m running as fast as I can / Toward a stunning and imperfect plan.” The couplet appears midway through That’s How We Burn, the fine Sub Pop debut by Jaill, and it encapsulates the Milwaukee quartet’s tipsy but assured take on Plimsouls-meets-REM, early-’80s mid-fi pop. It’s the sound of…
You got to give it up for local boys done good. Former downtown poster boys Miniature Tigers may have shuffled off to New York, but that hasn’t stopped them or their label, Modern Art Records, from drawing considerable national focus to Phoenix and Arizona-centric issues, like posting a message from…
Now in their 35th year, the Scorpions are a quintessential hard rock band. Everything from their over-the-top ’80s sound to their Spinal Tap-length roster of current and past members (there have been 19 Scorpions!) is somehow representative of all the ridiculousness of hard rock’s heyday. You may remember hits like…
Game (he dropped the “The” for his new album) has a new album coming out in August. It might actually be pretty good. I was a) convinced he was quitting rap after his 2008 album, LAX, partially because Game told everyone he would, and b) under the assumption that moribund…
