Boasting one of punk’s essential band names, The Vibrators played their first show 30 years ago, when punk was still a baby pulling the safety pins out of its diaper, supporting The Stranglers. By the end of that first year, they had a classic single out (“We Vibrate”) and had…
As if he wasn’t already busy enough running the ultra-popular Shake! on Saturdays at The Rogue East, DJ William Fucking Reed is kicking off another weekly dance night for hepcats and hotties alike with Pretty Vacant! at Anderson’s Fifth Estate, 6820 East Fifth Avenue in Scottsdale. Every Friday, Reed will…
A hefty chunk of Phoenix’s musical glory days is contained on these two discs, collections of soul and funk singles from the ’60s and early ’70s that remind the listener that the ‘Nix once aspired to be a real music town, like Detroit. Actually, listen to either one of these…
If you’re jonesing for some new local tuneage that isn’t hardcore metal, pouty skinny-boy rock, or indie folk, look no further than Chief Beef. Chief Beef — singer/guitarist John Lipfert, bassist Christine Lipfert (yes, they’re husband and wife) and drummer Stewart Alaniz — just might be one of P-town’s best-kept…
For a band named after a slang term for a Tommy Chong-sized spliff, Fat Rhabit doesn’t sound much like typical stoner rock. In fact, it doesn’t sound like typical anything. On its six-song, self-titled EP, which was recorded in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the band plays straight-ahead rock laced with every…
Life’s gotta be hard if you’re Jeremy Enigk. No matter what he does, the singer/songwriter’s new music will always be compared to his emo-core pioneering of ’90s Sub-Pop powerhouse act Sunny Day Real Estate, and The Fire Theft, which Enigk fronted shortly after SDRE’s demise. On top of that, World…
The band wears ghoulish masks and uniforms, has an eight-man lineup, and plays a metal mashup that incorporates elements of hip-hop, industrial, and hardcore. Sounds a lot like Slipknot. But people who write Mushroomhead off as a Slipknot rip-off probably haven’t heard the one about the time Mushroomhead (formed in…
The members of New York-based band Scissor Sisters admit they were feeling the pressures of a “sophomore slump” when they headed into the studio to begin recording Ta-Dah, the follow-up to the Sisters’ critically acclaimed 2004 self-titled album. One of the things that made that first record so outstanding was…
Like an indie-rock Bob Dylan, Decemberists front man Colin Meloy prefers a mythologized past to an uncertain here and now. While The Crane Wife touches on political and romantic issues, the war songs are set during the Civil War and the broken-down relationships spring from fables. On earlier records, Meloy’s…
The goofy band name may suggest they have mo’ ‘fro than any hippie band since Sly dissolved the Family Stone. But even if that were the case, it wouldn’t be what ultimately separates the guys in Mofro from their jam-rock brethren. No, where these two really stand out from the…
The Portland, Oregon-based duo of Pete Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman effectively straddle the worlds of both freeform noise and more mainstream songwriting. As the Yellow Swans, they collaborate — with experimental noise artist John Wiese, among many others — tour, and operate their Jyrk label within the parameters of…
Dashboard Confessional frontman Chris Carabba has an understandable reputation as the father of contemporary emo, which he most likely earned by penning weepy, whiny songs about how much girls have messed him up. Listening to his albums is generally like flipping through the diary of a depressed 14-year-old boy, and…
Remember Quentin Tarantino’s sensational revenge flick Kill Bill Vol. 1, particularly when the Texas Rangers happened upon the gory, blood-splattered aftermath of a slaughtered wedding party? That’s probably what you’ll see near the end of Bloodfest 2: A Wedding Massacre on Friday, October 13. This red-drenched rave will feature a…
Northern California duo Panacea makes the kind of dreamy, mystical hip-hop that mid-’90s Bush Babees fans would find familiar. They make songs like “Ecosphere,” where producer K-Murdock makes soulful and yearning tracks that rapper Raw Poetic chops up with his edgy yet insightful vocals. “Stars, I count them, one two…
Fran Scianna, best known for playing in local rock band The Sciannas with his brother Dan, decided he wanted to make a “deeper, more psychedelic sound” and left to form his own band, Studying Stones, which takes its name from the Ani DiFranco song about digging through one’s family roots…
Never base your music on an identity crisis — just ask Chris Gaines. Don’t remember Gaines? In one of the greatest missteps in recent music history, Garth Brooks attempted to transfigure himself from paunchy Fortune 500 cowboy to pouty goth-rock singer Chris Gaines, proving that Brooks belongs in Nashville, not…
Compile the best of R.E.M.’s earliest output on one CD, and it’s easy to see why they ultimately became one of the biggest bands in the world: optimism. That’s the overwhelming feeling pervading Fine, a smartly sequenced collection spanning the Athens, Georgia, then-quartet’s pre-major-label years. R.E.M. had nothing to lose…
There are memorable collaborations throughout Will “Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy” Oldham’s musically promiscuous career, including recent ones with Tortoise, Matt Sweeney, and Jason Molina. The latest to bear fruit is with Drag City labelmate Dawn McCarthy of Faun Fables, whose contributions to The Letting Go are understated by such adjectives as…
The drummers of rock ‘n’ roll lore are either dead (Cozy Powell, John Bonham), notorious chick-magnet partyers (Tommy Lee), or both (Keith Moon, Benny Benjamin). The drummers on Drum Nation Volume 3 are none of the above. But they are some of the heaviest hitters in metal and hard rock…
For those who miss the raw, adolescent, power-crunch pop of Superchunk’s early days, Mac McCaughan’s new Portastatic album may be disappointing. The Merge Records head honcho has crafted his most adult effort to date, full of oboe, flute, and string arrangements over a lazy, North Carolina drawl of guitars, bass,…
Connecticut’s Hatebreed comes out of that whole late-’80s/early-’90s Youth Crew, “We’re all about unity and positivity, and we’ll kick the ass of anyone who says different” mindset fostered by the New York and Boston hardcore scenes. It has managed to bash out four albums of monochromatic metalcore — the latest…
Celtic Frost is one of the few ’80s thrash giants that hasn’t been co-opted by the forces of hipster irony. The Swiss hellions released an inexplicable (and excellent) hair metal album in 1988’s Cold Lake, but that’s not what you want from the death/doom/black-metal pioneers. (Kurt Cobain was a big…
