Although her flamboyant outfits may never be polite, Björk’s last few albums certainly were. The ice-crystal percussion and melodies on Vespertine were stunning but mannered, like an immaculately decorated parlor, while the nearly a cappella Medulla — an album in which beatboxing and throat-singing replaced traditional instrumentation — felt too…
Total chaos. Upon initial inspection, that’s what the songs of local duo Get Down! To Brass Tacks are built upon — synthesizers careen through the compositions like a blind man driving a Mack truck through a carnival of cowbells and fatass basslines, while singer/bassist Aarik Miller shrieks and wails through…
Jimmy LaValle has made music in the past with some interesting bands (Tristeza and Black Heart Procession chief among them), but the best thing that ever happened to him — and listeners, too — was when members of cosmic art-rockers Sigur Rós discovered one of the discs he’d recorded under…
Voxtrot’s eponymous 2006 EP may be the best indie-rock debut since, oh, the Pixies’ Come On Pilgrim. Each of the five songs on Voxtrot is nigh on perfect — a crystalline distillation of the band’s love of ’80s British pop. That’s not to say that the Austin quintet’s disc is…
Matt and Kim are just totally fun. Totally. Like a power-pop take on They Might Be Giants, with a (simulated) accordion and everything. They’re even from Brooklyn, where they’ve developed a loyal following at loft parties, basements, art galleries, and clubs. They accurately describe their live sets as having the…
Two songs on The Shapes We Make show the influence moving back to Washington, D.C., has had on Mary Timony’s writing. The spritely “Sharpshooter” — as close as the ex-Helium frontwoman gets to out-and-out indie-pop these days — sees wildlife turning the tables on trigger-happy hunters (“Ted Nugent, hey whatcha…
Club DJs of the P-Town, we feel your pain. You endlessly work the same local joints week after endless week, slaving over the turntables and beat-matching your brains out for a bunch of selfish and snotty hotties, all the while dreaming of blowing this burg for far-flung destinations and superstardom…
Duders. That’s what the Coach House in Scottsdale had to offer on Saturday, May 19. (Click here for more photos.) The ratio of post-adolescent ex-football players to cutesy Scottsdale ladies was about 2 to 1. Although the vibe was relaxed, we spied some scattered single sirens on the prowl, taking…
“Well, even if he just sits down and licks his balls, it’ll still be fun.” It’s Cinco de Mayo, and my buddy B-Boy is trying to talk me into going to the annual Chihuahua races in Chandler. My companion wants to enter Blanquito, his sister’s cream-colored Chihuahua, in the races…
Yes, it seems as if we can’t get away from the typical DJ . . . spinning relatively hot tunes and taking his headphones way too seriously in an obvious, pathetic attempt to get laid. So, it was great to hit Homme Lounge on a Thursday night, when they embrace…
Skinny Puppy’s known for its dark industrial sound and psycho-techno compositions that don’t follow a linear progression. The doomy machines are still present on Mythmaker, but the songs here are SP’s most danceable yet, from the infernal pulse and processed vocals of the leadoff track, “Magnifishit,” to the KMFDM-feel and…
What hath Nile Rodgers wrought? Or was it Giorgio Moroder? Whoever was the wizard who figured out how to make records without musicians has a lot to answer for. True, sampled beats and programmed rhythms come a lot cheaper than those who can actually play instruments, but pop and dance…
Although Dahl’s the closest thing the Valley has to a punk elder statesman, the bulk of Jeff Dahl’s extensive “three chords and a bad attitude” discography has always had more of a kinship with the glam precursors of punk (Mott the Hoople, the New York Dolls, the Stooges) than any…
Once upon a time, singers and songwriters told stories. Back before Bob Dylan plugged in, “folk” music was just that — music about folks, some stemming from oral traditions, others steeped in a performer’s personal stories. That was before the “confessional” folk of people like Ani DiFranco took hold and…
Charlie Mingus — bass player, composer, bandleader — was one of America’s greatest jazz musicians. His ability to bring out the best in his sidemen is legendary, as is the passion and fury he put into every note he played. He cut Tijuana Moods — the soundtrack for a wild,…
“Avant-garde” isn’t the most appropriate label to place on eco new music percussionist Jeph Jerman and his approach to producing sound. Sure, his uniquely captured artistry — which doesn’t rely upon popular time signatures, written notations, and detectable meter — can be placed in the, ahem, “acquired taste” category. But…
A band that calls its album Examples of the Cataclysmic is obviously thinking big. Walter Alias, a Kansas City transplant from Branson, Missouri, describes its sweeping sound as “cinematic,” and it’s not hard to imagine the quartet’s swelling choruses set against some critical moment in a movie about the apocalypse,…
Last year, in these very pages, I noted that the fabulously suave, poetic, and pillowy English band The Clientele “pulls off the rare, swell trick of reminding you of literally dozens of artists — the late Arthur Lee, Dream Syndicate, Mercury Rev, Felt, Lightning Seeds, Galaxie 500, Nick Drake, The…
Here’s a news flash: Fridays are pretty old and busted, while Thursdays are the new hotness. In fact, we’ve been rapidly burning up our sick days lately by starting off the weekend one day early (shhh . . . don’t tell our bosses), and a fave destination has definitely been…
Last month’s YouTube phenomenon — Alanis Morrisette’s parody of “My Humps” — revealed what we all suspected, that Fergie’s ode to her lady lumps just doesn’t stand up to lyrical scrutiny. The marvelous thing about last year’s YouTube phenomenon, Obadiah Parker’s acoustic revisiting of Outkast’s “Hey Ya” superimposed over the…
Some bands wear their influences on their sleeves. Phoenix trio Emperors of Japan are no exception, but the quirky group has altered its attire. The Emperors wear many clothes. For example, “Reptile,” the opening track to the band’s first album, opens like an old Cure song, with spacy, dreamy keyboards…
The late alto saxophonist Jackie McLean was infamous for a rich and powerful tone, a heroin addiction, and being the dude who nearly stabbed iconoclast Charles Mingus after the big bully bassist punched him. But one thing overlooked during McLean’s career — due to the relatively restrained modal jazz compositional…
