The former Traveling Wilbury is on a roll these days — in addition to reuniting his pre-fame band Mudcrutch for a much-appreciated CD, he has found a growing number of younger fans during his current tour. According to reports, a large number of 20-somethings have flocked to his shows alongside…
Singer-songwriter Shawn Mullins defies a cut-and-dried definition. Influenced by everybody from the Violent Femmes and James Taylor to contemporaries like the Indigo Girls (whose co-founder, Amy Ray, attended Clarkston High School in Georgia with Mullins), the folk rocker maintains a homey pop vibe throughout his albums but doesn’t feel compelled…
What’s that noise? If it sounds like anarchy in the PC, it’s probably the wondrous effectual whirlpool of Valley circuit bender The Coitus. Using “instruments” such as old Atari gaming systems, Casio keyboards, and Commodore computers in combination with modified kids’ toys, synthcarts, and homemade sound contraptions, The Coitus calls…
Whenever we’re out surveying some of the more ostentatious and showy nightspots that make up P-town’s club scene, the lyrics from that Finger 11 song “Paralyzer” seem to roll through our heads. You know, the verse where Scott Anderson sings: “This club has got to be/The most pretentious thing/Since I…
J-Heads, Club Candids
By Benjamin Leatherman It’s a damn shame that in a city the size of Phoenix (the fifth largest in the nation last we checked) there’s a real dearth of cool independent music stores. But, hey, at least it lets us appreciate those scant few record shops that are available all…
By Benjamin Leatherman Here’s a list of what’s been selling at Circles Records & Tapes (800 North Central Avenue in Phoenix). 1. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (Cash Money) 2. Suga Free, Sunday School (Siccness) 3. The-Dream, Love Hate (Def Jam) 4. Roca Dolla, Roca Is a Classic (5Fith Coast…
We did it. We listened attentively — and when our habitually short attention span kicked in, inattentively — to Electric Fan Sounds Works presented by The Tucson Electric Fan Appreciation Society. Not once, but three times. And during these listens, we accomplished some things, such as editing and paperwork. We…
Attend a number of Foot Ox concerts, and you’ll normally see project founder Teague Cullen, by himself, frantically running through a repertoire of singer-songwriter tunes about love and hope. His second album in as many years, It’s Like Our Little Machine, slows things down a bit, leaving space for exceptional…
Singer/songwriter David Berman is as much of an ironist in life as he is in art. Note that after landing in rehab following a Xanax overdose (an act with sardonic aspects of its own), he belatedly embraced Judaism — a belief system he’d never taken seriously despite his band’s name…
It’s hard not to admire the audacity of an artist who, after clawing his way up from the underground to the brink of the big time, not only makes his would-be breakthrough a half-tribute to Michael Jackson’s Thriller and a half-parody of it but also loads it up as a…
“California’s original punk/surf power trio” released a greatest hits album in May, the appropriately titled Surfing to Some F#*ked Up S@!t. Of course the compilation includes the classic “Bloodstains” (an old favorite of DJ Rodney Bingenheimer on L.A.’s KROQ station), and “Everything Turns Grey,” another track from the band’s seminal 1981…
Shai Hulud debuted with 1997’s Profound Hatred of Man, and judging by this year’s Misanthropy Pure, they haven’t exactly altered their lyrical approach. The group hasn’t really tinkered with its sound, either, but metalcore has changed significantly over the past decade. Whereas popular metalcore now entails a parade of down-tuned…
It’s been more than a decade since the blockbuster electronica duo of Ken Johnson and Scott Kirkland (a.k.a. The Crystal Method) broke out big-time in 1997, helping to popularize the late-’90s “big beat” EDM sound. And though most alt-music acts from that era have faded into obscurity, Crystal Method is…
By Lilia Menconi Mmmm. Boobies. Now check the slideshow. If you happened to be a ’90s rocker (pick your flavor — butt or punk) in Phoenix, you surely caught a Plinko or Pelvic Meatloaf show as you made your rounds among the Nile, Party Gardens, and the Mason Jar. The…
Being a booze pig, I pride myself on knowing the location of every dive bar in town. It gets a little more difficult when you are in the sixth-largest city in the country. Because our desert-gobbling sprawl is so huge, I often ask friends and strangers alike, “Do you know…
Given the band/album name and cover image, I half-expected this band to sound like either cheesy ’80s cock-rock throwbacks or raucous hardcore punk. It’s neither. Although the band describes its music as “metal/hardcore/Southern rock” on its MySpace page, I’d say that description’s only about two-thirds accurate. It’s definitely hardcore metal,…
Danger Mouse is arguably the most adventurous producer to tackle a Beck project since the Dust Brothers helped birth a 1996 baby called Odelay (the Dusters’ return for 2004’s Güero doesn’t count). The resulting sound is satisfyingly dense and intricate; the neo-surf of “Gamma Ray,” the delicate psychedelia of “Chemtrails,”…
Wild rumors are standard-issue for the intentionally enigmatic Reggie and the Full Effect. But if the latest Internet scuttlebutt is true, Last Stop: Crappy Town is Kansas City native James Dewees’ (meaning the entire band’s) final album before he goes full time as the keyboardist for My Chemical Romance. Such…
The members of Journey must be feeling the band’s name is more meaningful than ever these days. It’s unlikely any band has a comeback as thoroughly modern and convoluted as these AOR mainstays, pulled back into public consciousness by HBO and YouTube. Since the 1996 departure of lead singer Steve…
Rich and famous bands into their 10th year and sixth album demonstrate a worldview tempered by easy women and shysters. Hard-working bands with a growing cult following, like the Bay Area trio Totimoshi, demonstrate a worldview tempered by . . . actual observation! Singer and guitarist Antonio Aguilar describes the…
Rick Rubin already had been working for ZZ Top — the Houston trio recently enlisted Rubin to produce its next album — and now ZZ Top works for Rubin as well. Billboard reported that ZZ Top has signed a new record deal with Rubin’s American Recordings, an imprint distributed by…
