Brothers Peter and David Brewis may have an unerring knack for melodic hooks, but full songs prove a trickier proposition for them. Two-thirds of Field Music, the Brewises deliver their second album of frequently shimmering ditties on Tones of Town, stitching together Beach Boys harmonies, string sections, and XTC-style pop…
Keller Williams, the one-man jam band, is known for his ability to get the sound of a full orchestra out of his acoustic guitar using a variety of pedals and loops. On Dream, he invites 20 friends along for 16 unpredictable performances as a trio, quartet, full band, and duo…
Seattle singer-songwriter Jesse Sykes has long been uncomfortable with critical responses to her music as dark, lonely, and deeply depressed; instead (as she’s taken to saying), she plays “spooky American music.” This may seem like a minor semantic quibble, but it’s crucial to getting your head around Sykes’ second full-length…
Saliva’s rote fusion of rap metal, grunge, and alt rock should’ve died before the turn of the century, but it never has. Amazingly enough, the more generic and obsolete the Memphis band sounds, the more records it sells: “Ladies and Gentleman,” the first single off Blood Stained Love Story, recently…
For two decades, Walter Salas-Humera and his Silos have been one of the leading lights of Americana music. Sadly underappreciated, the New York-based Silos have released more than a dozen efforts that merge country, folk, and indie rock in increasingly fascinating ways. The band’s high-water mark was Cuba from 1987,…
Think about how many reality-TV-show marriages have ended in divorce — and then think about how many groups created in the artificial light of television (The Monkees, The New Monkees, The Partridge Family, The Archies, Kaptain Kool and the Kongs, Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem, The Bugaloos, Cyanide, Josie…
Until some impresario rounds up a troupe of working prostitutes to personally give each audience member a hand job, you’re not going to get a better wet-dream marketing triumph than The Pussycat Dolls. Originally a neoburlesque dance troupe in L.A. that quickly franchised in Sin City, the whole PCD enterprise…
Having a musical legend you call dad can be a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you don’t have to go on American Idol to get the industry’s attention. On the other hand, you kind of have to spend your whole life selling records in the old man’s…
Mommy and Daddy? We’ve been really good lately, so can we go on a field trip with our bestest buddies to the Kindergarten Rave on Saturday, February 24? Don’t worry, there’ll be supervision from growned-ups, like our two special hippy-hoppy friends, Grand Buffet from Pittsburgh (who’ll be performing), and we’ll…
Dense with vivid, lively chirp patterns, Gui Boratto’s debut full-length offers authentic dance-floor splendor. The Brazilian producer’s use of summery melodies on the diverse Chromophobia makes for many pleasant moments, as he sometimes warms wobbly, gritty android movements with surging synths (“Terminal”) or lights the way with splintering trance (“The…
1. The Shins, Wincing the Night Away (Sub Pop) 2. Bloc Party, Weekend in the City (Vice Records) 3. John Mayer, The Village Sessions (Sony BMG) 4. Fall Out Boy, Infinity on High (Island Records) 5. Dear and the Headlights, Small Steps, Heavy Hooves (Equal Vision Records) 6. Lucinda Williams,…
If getting obliterated only two nights a week just isn’t enough to fill whatever emotional void you’ve got going on, Club Candids has found the perfect place to make an early-week pit stop to fill your empty vessel with the glorious numbing power of booze. And you don’t have to…
As my girlfriend CooKie and I approach the entrance of the new Mondrian (pronounced mon-dree-on, best with a pretentious French accent) on a recent Tuesday night, I get an urge to run away. This is so not my scene. I usually hang out in rock clubs, dive bars, strip clubs,…
Club Candids had so much fun gallivanting among the potholes and dirt mounds of downtown Phoenix last week that we decided to hit up the ‘hood again for the Brickhouse Theatre 2007 Industry Party on Saturday, February 10. The show was the venue’s clever ploy to bring some butts through…
Is there such a thing as “fate” in musical collaborations? There is if you’re former sElf frontman Matt Mahaffey and former God Lives Underwater guru Jeff Turzo. The pair came together after each found himself watching videos of the other’s band on MTV’s 120 Minutes — the station had confused…
DJ Seduce’s masterful mashup of Afrobeats, Brazilian jazz, Latin funk, and downtempo grooves — injected with the occasional flamenco guitar, bongo breakdown, piano jam, and ethereal flute — makes for a mesmerizing musical menagerie. Whether he’s kicking cowbells and sharp snare beats into a samba (as he does in his…
After being together for more than two years as The Brokedown, this L.A. quintet recently changed its name because of complaints from a similarly monikered band. Now christened The Broken West, the group seems to be taking the adjustment in stride, but, based on the evidence provided by its full-length…
An Australia-born, Canada-based one-man band who made his global debut with a 2001 album recorded (and titled) Live in Canada, Xavier Rudd is only now debuting stateside — oddly enough, with a year-old full-length that’s already achieved gold status in his home country. Considering the American niche-market successes of Rudd’s…
Robert Schneider is up to his usual tricks on The Apples’ first album in five long years, assembling effervescent pop gems from the echoes of his favorite records of the psychedelic ’60s (with the occasional nod to Electric Light Orchestra and, possibly, the Partridge Family). It’s hard to say what…
How do you follow a million- selling debut effort that music mag NME named “Album of the Year”? If you’re Bloc Party, maybe you throw in some moodier moments and send out for strings on a couple of tracks without abandoning your roots in twitchy, postpunk angularity. And, well, it…
Not only does Shane Ocell play all the instruments in Via Vengeance, but he plays them all at once. With his Gibson guitar on his lap, he sits behind his drum set and feeds fat, gritty guitar sounds through effects pedals and Sunn amps with one hand while drumming with…
Since striking out on their own as The Autumn Defense, Wilco bassist John Stirratt and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone have seen their soft-rock side compared in Rolling Stone to Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and the slower side of Big Star. But the lead-off track to The Autumn Defense’s new self-titled effort…
