One of the things I love best about Bright Eyes (yes, I unapologetically love Bright Eyes) is the way the band mingles so many rootsy sounds in songs that end up sounding contemporary. It’s for that reason, and not just Matthew Reveles’ vulnerable, emotive vocals, that I compare the Tempe…
Bruce Springsteen is an icon who’s divided music fans like few other artists have. There’s a sizable faction of fans that worshipfully buys every album, attends every concert, and generally believes that “The Boss” can do no wrong. Nothing written here is going to persuade them not to go to…
It’s perfectly normal to admit you enjoy a small dose of the Grateful Dead. One need not be a hippie or a ponytail enthusiast in his 60s to enjoy the Dead, as the popular — and painfully accurate — stereotype dictates. For example, I enjoy putting on American Beauty and…
If your first assumption was that Phoenix alt-rockers Mondegreen came up with their name as some sort of quasi-artsy way of saying “green world,” you wouldn’t be alone, but you’d be wrong. Despite its vaguely Frenglish vibe, the word “mondegreen” was actually coined by American writer Sylvia Wright in 1954…
Respecting a band for being out there and doing its thing in front of strangers night after night is something we take for granted in this evolving music culture. We (myself included) are too quick to judge a band after hearing only one or two songs. We dismiss it as…
It’s that time of year again, when Valley country fans by the thousands kick up dust in the trampled alfalfa fields at the Canyon Moon Ranch outside Florence, where the annual Country Thunder music festival trots out four days of the biggest names in contemporary country music. After a lackluster…
If you were a club kid or music fan back in 1995, chances are you might have heard about a swanky little soiree called The Hip Joint. Seeping with style, the fly fete went down weekly during the middle of the Clinton era at bygone venues like Jamaican Blue in…
Maybe it’s because I don’t listen to a lot of it in my off hours – that time when I want only the sweet, sweet voice of Karen Carpenter to sooth me over AM radio – but I’m constantly surprised by the depth and quality of the Phoenix metal scene…
We trust Hoodlums to put on a damn fine event. So when we heard about the “Support Your Local Band” Poster Art Show, put together by Hoodlums and the Spraygraphic.com community, we were in, baby!On Saturday, March 28th, we perused the walls that were filled with some stellar artwork, honoring…
There’s not a ton of live music in town this weekend — especially compared to next weekend’s musical bonanza of Country Thunder/Tempe Music Fest/Springsteen/Bonnie Prince Billy/Calexico/Leonard Cohen — so this week’s flier is for a dance night. Not just any Dance night though, as Benjamin Leatherman wrote in this week’s…
Grindcore, for the uninitiated, is the extreme genre of metal that prizes blast beats (i.e., drumming that mimics both the speed of a machine gun and the impact of percussion grenades); ultra-heavy, lightning-fast guitars that aim to disembowel you with every riff; and scary, demonic slaughterhouse growls. Basically, the kind…
Given the liquid gyrations of their anime styling and the general sexual repression of their Japanese homeland, it just makes sense that a group of Japanese dudes would start a “Japanese action comic punk band” called Peelander-Z. But we hear you say, “Didn’t Peelander-Z form in New York City?” Before…
It sounds strange to say, but the idea of a white dude from the Midwest starting a hip-hop label doesn’t even seem that unique anymore. Ever since Atmosphere turned Rhymesayers Entertainment into an emo-rap empire and Insane Clown Posse built Psychopathic Records into a marketing juggernaut that Gene Simmons would…
Rockabilly is a genre known as much for its flamboyant, ’50s-rooted imagery as it is for its music, so the juxtaposition of rockabilly music and an old-fashioned burlesque show seems like such a natural fit that the only surprise is that nobody thought of it sooner. Big John Bates and…
Being adopted by and revered in a city where you’ve lived for the greater part of a decade isn’t impressive. When that city happens to be New Orleans and you are a white soul, blues, and R&B singer from San Francisco, the feat becomes legendary. Such is life for Eric…
It’s downright scary how much music Jarom Wilcken is planning to unleash at his spooky-sounding nighttime affair Danse Macabre. As his alter ego DJ Vivo Muerto, the 30-year-old owner of anti-fashion label Helter Skelter Clothing will serve up a fiendish orgy of music that includes a slew of goth, industrial,…
One of the things I love best about Bright Eyes (and yes, I unapologetically love Bright Eyes) is the way the band mingles so many rootsy sounds in songs that end up being totally contemporary. It’s for that reason, and not just Matthew Reveles’ vulnerable, emotive vocals, that I compare…
You can expect several things from Super Sensational Saturdays at the Bikini Lounge: great tunes from resident DJs Borisimo and The Gestapo – plus a revolving dorr of special guests, drinks you can still feel the next afternoon, and the promise of a $500 raffle that never actually happens (see…
As I wrote back when I reviewed their album The Narrator for You Asked for it, I’ve always been a fan of Evan Brightly’s aesthetic. The group, which functions more like an art collective than a traditional band, does some cool stuff. Not sure who designed this poster for their…
There was a time when hearing a boyish and manicured voice like Conner Cecil’s alongside a willowy pedal steel wasn’t uncommon in country music. That time is long gone, though, and hearing Conner — a Globe native whose voice matches his cherubic face — on his debut EP, Conner, is…
Over the years, instrumental rock has earned a (mostly deserved) reputation for being self-indulgent, pretentious, and unnecessarily intricate. On their early albums and EPs, Chicago instru-metal quartet Pelican certainly fit that mold, crafting dense, multilayered songs that frequently exceeded the 10-minute mark. But their latest release, 2007’s City of Echoes,…
In a town struggling to hold onto indie cred by the hair of its collective chinny-chin-chin, a hometown concert of a successful indie rock band is like a big “HA!” to the rest of the country. Enter Tempe’s own musical underdogs, The Maine. Sure, their stylists seem to be part…
