Title: Deceleration TraumaBasics: Billing themselves as “your new favorite band!” the Phoenix-based quartet, entirely comprising transplants, plays a pretty straight-forward brand of punk rock. This would usually be a humdrum or bad thing, but given the hordes of simply awful bands I have had to recently listen to for You…
The Arizona Republic’s website, AZCentral.com runs an annual “Reader’s Choice” contest which everyone should know by now is a huge farce.Editors have, for example, allowed the nomination of two canceled music festivals in the “Best Music Festival” category. So, yeah, it’s a joke and everyone should know it’s a joke.The…
Since musicians like Trey Songz are just not enough to send the message home that getting tipsy before hooking up is totally a great idea (and not risky at all), now pop music fans have Christina Aguilera to praise the virtues of getting drizzunk before getting physical in her latest…
There’s not a whole lot to this flier, for a show by The X Chromosomes at Rogue Bar Friday, June 4, but that doesn’t mean it’s unsuccessful in grabbing your attention. The prettily colored design just sucks you in, almost as if it’s hypnotizing you with its dizzying interlocking rings…and…
If ever there were a place designed to host punk and rockabilly events, it would be Sucker Punch Sallys. Sporting décor overflowing with retro style and hot rod attitude, the ’50s-style Tempe diner, at 4 East University Drive, is brimming with vintage guitars, paintings of souped-up racers, and other items…
Oy vey, these kids are young. How young? Well, they still have that wet, matted, quivering-foal youngness to them. You know? That certain gooeyness that just screams “Clearasil-sponsored talent search winners.” Raised on the mean streets of Fountain Hills, this mixed-gender foursome certainly looks the part of the lean, hungry,…
The Sail Inn seems an unlikely place to catch a marching band perform. You’d expect to find a marching band at a parade or somewhere they could, you know, actually march. But there isn’t very much traditional about Portland’s MarchFourth Marching Band. On paper, the group is built just like…
MURS does everything with purpose. Every song, every line, every collaborator seems to spring from deep thought. Even his name, which he asserts was received from the heavens, is an acronym for either “Making Underground Raw Shit” or “Making the Universe Recognize and Submit,” depending on whom you ask. The…
It would be unforgivably glib to say that Miike Snow — an electropop trio from Sweden — sometimes sounds like ABBA with an echo deck. But it’s true! It’s so true. Crisply emotive, with unusual phrasings and a disarming dash of neo-funk, the music has inspired comparisons to Vampire Weekend…
Is “indie movie trailer” its own genre yet? It’s hard to hear the final minute of a song like “The Cave” by London’s Mumford & Sons, marked by a soaring yet contemplative refrain of “I will change my ways,” without envisioning it accompanying scenes of, say, Jesse Eisenberg and Kat…
Tributes to John Denver run the gamut. Take the singer-songwriter’s chart-topping hit song “Leaving on a Jet Plane” for example. It’s been reborn as a rock song, reggae song, and even a punk song, covered by Liza Minnelli, Chantal Kreviazuk, Slightly Stoopid, Sister Hazel, Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies,…
Folks at The Stray Cat were wild’n out in a serious way at WTFunk Friday last weekend. See what you missed in our WTFunk Friday slideshow…
One of the coolest things about reading What’s Selling every week is seeing how people in different parts of town at different record stores in the same city buy such drastically different kinds of records. Revolver Records attracts a lot of the die-hard vinyl consumers in CenPho, and their taste…
Title: Late Night InnuendoBasics: I’ve given up trying to imagine some local Arizona bands sending in something remotely different from country-twinged rock music. It seems all local, smaller bands record this same type of music. There’s no point in trying to fight it. I don’t get it — but I…
It’s not often you hear or see guys imploring girls to settle down. Rather, women are all too often stuck with the rap of getting “players” to commit (it’s science: just read Cosmopolitan or watch any romantic comedy), so it’s refreshing to hear a song where it’s the man (if…
At first glance, you might think this poster is for a 90’s movie night. At Yucca Tap Room? Nah.Local pop rock band Domo, including singer/guitarist Jason Sukut (who designed the flier), are simply paying tribute to the film Men at Work, starring Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez.”I wouldn’t exactly call…
Put away your Docs, Mr. Aging Gen X Rock Fan — this almost certainly isn’t the X that afforded you so many precious mosh-pit memories back in the day. That X featured the pitch-perfect wailing of John Doe and Exene Cervenka, the V-twin rockabilly guitar of Billy Zoom, and the…
It’s understandable if fans are apprehensive about seeing a George Clinton performance in the year 2010. After all, the man turns 69 years old this summer, and there’s a point where the line between “playful eccentricity” and “rampant senility” start to blur. Reports of fellow funk icon and frequent Clinton…
What makes these proto-grunge mainstays stand out from the crowd? Is it their low-and-slow sludge musicianship? Their glory days as the elder statesmen of the Northwest music scene? Lead singer/guitarist Buzz Osborne’s irrepressible Robin Lopez hairdo? Naw. It’s their dang Protestant work ethic. In the two-plus decades since their debut…
Under normal circumstances, Monday night isn’t exactly a big evening for DJs and dance events (look no further than scant amount of listings we’ve got for proof). Since it’s Memorial Day weekend, however, chances are good that y’all might be in the mood to party. DJ Steel’s weekly Manic Monday…
It seems most bands from Arizona can’t escape their desert roots. While Job for a Cowboy is a death-metal outfit of the hardcore variety, their name surely reflects their Glendale roots. The West Valley band has received national attention from Rolling Stone and the New York Times, which described Job…
Domo is quite possibly the most underrated band in Phoenix. Sadly, they don’t perform around town much, but they when do appear, it’s a treat. With their catchy, bouncy, spritely, and endearing songs, they combine both pop and punk sensibilities without veering into the dreaded and disgusting teeny-bop genre known…
