Otep Shamaya says, “Art is war.” The singer for her namesake L.A.-based metal-fusion band, Otep, considers herself a revolutionary, and makes art catharsis via visceral screams and songs that sear the ears like hot grease. Her lyrics are laden with apocryphal poetics about religion, politics, love, and loathing; she’s a…
God bless K Records’ tousled-bedhead messes, but it’s a mystery to us what, exactly, Saturday Looks Good to Me are doing on this label’s roster. These Ann Arbor, Michigan-based indie-poppers simply have their “gee willikers” stuff a bit too together, you know? Neither Calvin Johnson nor Phil Elverum had a…
Flashback to a year ago: I’m rolling around in bed one morning, wanting to vomit and complaining about my acid reflux. My young girlfriend is just emerging from the shower when I bellow at her to throw me the Zantac. My door swings open, and a bottle hits me hard…
It’s either fortuitous psychic planning or just plain dumb luck that The Green Lady Killers released an EP that opens with a song called “Psycho Ellen” in the same week Ellen DeGeneres cuckooed up the airwaves weeping about a troublesome doggy she couldn’t handle with some kind of Michael Vick…
“The pig! The pig! Let’s go see the ‘World’s Largest Pig’!” It’s a rather windy Tuesday night in mid-October, and I have just spotted yet another attraction at the Arizona State Fair that I can’t drag my buddy B-Boy to just yet. Tonight, B-Boy’s all about Weird Al Yankovic, who’s…
This first edition of Weird Al’s greatest hits came out in 1988, but the parodies are such familiar songs of their times that people of any age can appreciate them. Of course, his best-known parodies (“Fat” and “Eat It”) are here, but there’s also Al’s mutation of Madonna’s “Like a…
Any time you try to encapsulate a nearly 40-year-old genre in a four-CD boxed set, you’re going to end up with some holes. With The Heavy Metal Box, Rhino has done a fair job of mapping metal’s 1968-1991 evolution, from the fuzzed-out proto-metal of Blue Cheer’s “Summertime Blues” to the…
On her first solo release, the former Banshee shows us that the influential punk songwriter of the ’70s and ’80s has moved on and evolved musically without losing her edge. Having waited so long to do a full disc of her own, she takes the opportunity to experiment, and the…
Soulja Boy’s entry in the minstrel rap sweepstakes is called Souljaboytellem.com, and it has been virally marketed in a savvy way. Nonetheless, it’s about as stripped-down as a record can be. This is what rap would sound like if it had been invented in the 19th century — simple snaps,…
If your musical career began in underground clubs, it’s safe to say you’ve jumped the shark when you release a compilation of your own remixes. Oakenfold’s been filling large venues for years, but the distance from the dance floor has resulted in some serious distance from the very real talent…
Madonna may be the modern mistress of self-reinvention, but Diana Ross did it first. The Detroit-born singer started with a bouffant in the early ’60s as one-third of The Supremes, harmonizing on girl group hits like “You Can’t Hurry Love.” In the ’70s, despite resembling an even more waifish Michael…
Regardless of where you plop Jon Spencer — Pussy Galore, the Blues Explosion, Boss Hog, or Heavy Trash, his current partnership with Matt Verta-Ray — there is always an inimitable swagger to the music. It’s a combination of reverence for rootsy antecedents and a willingness to wander off-road into knotty…
The Evans-Churchill Neighborhood in downtown Phoenix just gets cooler by the week. The hepcat ‘hood (located along Roosevelt Street between Central Avenue and Seventh Street) not only serves as the epicenter for the monthly First Friday hootenanny, but it also boasts some bomb-ass, arty hangouts like The Lost Leaf, Carly’s…
Halloween celebrated by adults can be a frightening concept. Even though we’re too old to be afraid of ghouls and ghosts, there are plenty of scary things to witness. Poorly conceived costumes make everyone cringe, but the real horror is having to stare at overgrown bellies and saddlebags squeezed into…
Ghouls and goblins aren’t the only things that are gonna go bump in the night during the next seven days, as countless DJs, turntablists, and spin doctors will blasting phat beats all across P-town in celebration of the annual frightfest known as Halloween. One of the bigger shindigs will be…
There’s gotta be something in the coffee at Hear Music. Not only did they snatch Paul McCartney away from a 40-plus-year relationship with EMI, but they also got the elusive (and often reclusive) Joni Mitchell to go back into the recording studio nine years after her last CD, Taming the…
Every time I’ve been around Eddie Kelly, the singer for Blessedbethyname, some beautiful woman has shoved her breasts in my face. Kelly works as a DJ at Centerfolds Cabaret on Peoria Avenue, and even though I’ve been trying to interview him in a “quiet place with few distractions” for the…
We know it sounds weird, but every once in a while, people congregate in a specific area for something other than alcohol. As foreign as that concept may seem, we experienced it firsthand at the super-popular opening of the “Deck” art show at Bragg’s Pies Factory on Saturday, October 20…
All 16 of the stripper anthems here are old school, from the obvious (Rick James’ “Superfreak,” the Commodores’ “Brick House”) to the almost hilarious, like Samantha Fox’s “Touch Me (I Want Your Body),” and Clarence Carter’s “Strokin’.” Aside from the fact that there’s not a single Billy Squier song here…
One problem with the popular singer-songwriter genre is an egocentric focus on storytelling elements that feel a bit too sophisticated. Unfortunately, this lack of connection with the listener normally equals a disposable product rather than a timeless work of art. French Quarter main man Stephen Steinbrink — who brings a…
This compilation easily could serve as a “Greatest Hits” of the Phoenix indie-rock scene. The CD opens with “Various Kitchen Utensils” by Skybox, a band that relocated to Chicago a couple years ago but whom we still claim as our own because their brand of quirky ragtime rock is catchier…
With song titles such as “Dead Voices,” “Cruel Beauty,” and “Forget Yourself,” it’s a sure bet the USSA debut disc isn’t going to be tagged power-pop or Americana. With members including Paul Barker of Ministry and Duane Denison of Jesus Lizard (and Tomahawk), USSA, for the most part, sustains its…
