Despite the inflated reputation of 1999’s Keep It Like a Secret, it’s obvious Built to Spill has never made the perfect Built to Spill record. If anything, the band’s Pavement-meets-Phish take on jammy indie rock is universally agreed to be best realized in concert, and has been remarkably consistent, though…
It’s reportedly gonna be colder than normal this weekend, which means you’ll definitely want to be somewhere hot. Slide over to the Venue of Scottsdale, 7117 East Third Avenue in Scottsdale, where things are probably gonna get a little toasty during Tropic on Friday, October 9. Hollywood’s Latin Prince and…
If rock required a caretaker for its creative flame, it could do a lot worse than Yo La Tengo singer/guitarist Ira Kaplan. The one-time rock critic and his crew possess an encyclopedic knowledge of the form (witness their annual covers-by-request pledge drive performances for Jersey’s WFMU), and they’ve developed such…
Sequels can be tricky to pull off. For every Terminator 2 and The Dark Knight, there are twice as many shitheaps like Caddyshack II and The Two Jakes. This axiom also extends to music, which is cluttered beyond measure with ill-advised follow-ups: For example, Woodstock ’99 never should have existed…
After a meteoric rise that brought them perilously close to the line that separates buzz from hype, Vivian Girls have followed up their self-titled debut album with another that seems to wisely dial things back just a little. That isn’t to say that Everything Goes Wrong is subdued or watered…
It’s pretty much always good news when any of the Wu-Tang Clan decides to show up in town, so Ghostface Killah’s upcoming appearance is probably worth checking out, if only out of prurient interest. He just dropped his latest album, Ghostdini: The Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City, which for…
If a pig-roastin’ rock show at Tempe’s most legit dive bar is what you’re in the market for, this is it, bro. In the parking lot of the venerable Yucca Tap Room, an entire (presumably, already dead) pig will be sacrificed (ya know, metaphorically speaking) to the party gods. The…
Hold on a second: It’s called the Atticus Tour, and the co-headliner is a band called Finch? Wow, that’s really precious. Maybe they’ll hire Scout Willis as a cage-dancer, or add melancholy indie-pop duo Harper Lee to the bill later on. Actually, let’s hope they don’t. Featuring the identical swept…
There’s only one thing that almost kept The Skinwalkers from claiming this week’s Flier of the Week nod, and that’s the fact that they’ve done something similar to this before. Still, I’m OK seeing this oddly compelling piece of Esherian art twice. I’m not sure exactly what it’s doing to…
Jen Deveroux has become the hipster queen of putting on cutie-pie parties for the big-sunglasses crowd, like this summer’s Adult Swim and Tune in Tokyo. So it’s somewhat apropos that the 30-something promoter’s latest weekly gala is called Royal Filth and will take place every Saturday at the Rose and…
Somewhere along the way — probably after Garth Brooks invented the “arena country” genre in the early ’90s — country music lost its sense of humor in the quest for pop crossover moolah. Sadly, the twangy novelty tune became a thing of the past. Country music used to embrace its…
There’s no denying that Ingrid Michaelson is an indie-rock success story. The singer has sold many, many copies of her 2007 album Girls and Boys. Michaelson’s “The Way I Am” was featured heavily in an Old Navy ad campaign and her track “Keep Breathing” received some buzz after being played…
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, seems an unlikely locale for a punk band to form, but such is the case for The Queers who call the “Old Man in the Mountain”-less state. Rumor has it that the old-school punk rockers, who formed in 1982, were inspired by their name as a way…
More than one music journalist has dubbed this art-rock trio a “supergroup . . . of sorts.” Basically, that’s just industry shorthand for “a side project featuring musicians from two or more obscure but critically admired bands that have never sniffed the Billboard Hot 100.” In other words, they ain’t…
Does a Starfucker by any other name sound as sweet? We’re about to find out. In a recent interview with their hometown newspaper, the Portland Mercury, the synth-pop foursome officially put the ixnay on the snarky moniker that has served them so ably and profanely since they started playing as…
In case you missed it, the re-established Hoodlums Music store in Tempe turned one year old this weekend, proving you can’t keep a good store down (the store even managed to win a Best Of award before it re-opened for business). Owners Steve Wiley and Kristian Luce celebrated their success…
Having followed their fliers for a year or so, I’ve always been impressed with the varied styles of posters for shows with punky trio The Green Lady Killers. Depending on the week you may see a flier that leads you to believe they’re a Psychobilly band, riot grrrls, lazy indie…
Cameron Rosewicz (a.k.a. DJ mig50) used to sail the high seas of soft-rock cheesiness as the esteemed captain of the bygone Yacht Rock night over at downtown Phoenix’s Ruby Room. These days, however, the 27-year-old Shizz scenester and music junkie has been rocketing through the starry universe of “synthed-out, cosmic,…
Bon Iver may mostly be just a dude and a guitar, but don’t go thinking singer-songwriter. Justin Vernon’s French-named one-man band is much more, thanks to cobwebs of hazy effects and home-recorded imperfections. That’s because Bon Iver wasn’t intended to be anything more than a respite from Vernon’s freshly broken-up…
Those Seattle indie-rockers sure are an incestuous bunch, ain’t they? Swapping singers here, sharing keyboardists there. Consider the tangled genealogy of this Emerald City folk-rock trio, founded two years ago by guitarist-bassist Derek Fudesco when his old band, the much-admired Pretty Girls Make Graves, dissolved at the seeming height of…
While bizarro their name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, it doesn’t seem to be hurting !!! (CHK CHK CHK). The group, which originally formed to play an all-night party in Sacramento, has been called one of the most inventive dance-punk bands around. Their catchy tunes will infiltrate your noggin…
If you’re recovered from last weekend’s three-day Fall Frenzy at Tempe Beach Park and are ready to continue partying this weekend, check out 98 KUPD’s End of Summer Scorcher Saturday. The rock radio station is saying adios to summer with a cock-rock roster of hardcore acts for an all-day music…
