Much of U.K. outfit Art Brut’s appeal lies in the wide-eyed incredulity of frontgeezer Eddie Argos, the need he constantly feels to state (and then immediately restate) particular observations as if to highlight how incredible or ridiculous some circumstance is. “I saw her naked — twice!” he exclaims about a…
Charlie Musselwhite hasn’t lived in Chicago for a long time, but the Mississippi-Memphis lad cut his teeth in the Second City second generation of upstart white bluesboys like Paul Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield, who looked up to their heroes: Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, James Cotton, Junior Wells. It’s funny that…
The number of young, pasty men with petty post-rock ambitions could populate a small city — say, Mopetopia: Behold! Overly sensitive souls wile away the gray-dappled hours, thumbing through dog-eared copies of Schopenhauer, journaling ad nauseam or sobbing quietly into their chamomile tea. Enter Rahim, a New York-based three-piece that…
1998 was a terrific year for chicks with picks: Kacy Crowley, Billie Myers, Melanie Doane, Emm Gryner, Tara MacLean, Garrison Starr, and dozens of other female singer-songwriters got starring roles in Sarah McLachlan’s second Lilith Fair tour . . . and then they promptly fell off the face of the…
It’s been alleged that nearly every U2 song — from “I Will Follow” to “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own” — is about Jesus; certainly, Bono and buds have never really tried to hide their sturdy Christian roots, and yet they managed to transcend that dreaded “Christian rock”…
Not only does U.K. rock band Gomez play innovative, soulful music that makes listeners reconsider the talent of some other bands out there, but it’s apparently very Internet-savvy, too. The sixsome, whose new album How We Operate recently was released in the U.S., has an actual blog that it updates…
Who’d have thunk it? The way DJ nights come and go in this town, it’s pretty damned amazing that Adam “Dumperfoo” Dumper’s Thursday night Blunt Club at Hollywood Alley in Mesa has made it to the ripe old age of four. Mad props to Dumper and his cohorts, resident DJs…
Because a pedal steel guitar is featured prominently in their sound, The Court & Spark often get pegged as an alt-country band, but nothing could be further from the truth. The steel guitar is just part of a multilayered sound that can include cello, hammered dulcimer, Mellotron, and the percussive…
Unless I happen to stumble upon a great band at a live show, my laboratory for finding new music is my car. I’ll grab a random pile of CDs to play while driving back and forth to work on a familiar stretch of 16th Street, and depending on how much…
In the current business climate for live music venues here in the ‘Nix, a three-year anniversary is definitely something to celebrate. Last Exit, the rock and Americana club at Priest Drive and Southern Avenue in Tempe, is throwing a third birthday party for itself on Saturday, May 13, with Dramarama,…
This is the first release from local music maven Will “Vil Vodka” Tynor’s Vodka Tonic Media, and rather than highlight the talents of one band via a studio album, Tynor’s opted to showcase the sounds of six Arizona bands on this quirky comp. The synthesizer-saturated “Come On Feel It,” a…
Nothing personal, Meg, but working with new playmates has set Jack White free. “I’m through ripping myself off,” he screeches on the title track. If you didn’t catch that, he repeats, “I’m done ripping myself off.” From the lighthearted ease that oozes from every track, it’s obvious that White has…
If A Tribe Called Quest had jettisoned the bong-jazz flow and picked up where Afrika Bambaataa left off, the group would have created something like the simultaneously amped-up and chilled-out atmosphere of the debut by Baltimore duo Spank Rock. Naeem Juwan doesn’t blaze any trails with his booty-call braggart lyrics,…
The comparisons to Dido and Joss Stone that surround KT Tunstall are inevitable. She’s British and pretty, she sings wonderfully, and she was successful right out of the gate. But similarities to her fellow countrywomen end there. Whereas Dido and Stone are content to mine one stylistic vein, Tunstall has…
Aloha’s MySpace page lists the group’s hometown as “Cleveland, Cincinnati, Rochester and Washington, D.C.” — a rather nomadic declaration for a band four albums into its career. But since Tony Cavallario and Matthew Gengler formed Aloha in 1997, the quartet’s ability to avoid settling in one place has only been…
“Hey, man, have you seen any cool concerts lately?” “Oh yeah, man! I saw Queen with Paul Rodgers — it was awesome! I gotta tell you, I didn’t miss Freddie Mercury’s unique voice and stage presence one bit.” “Yeah, I thought the same thing when I saw INXS a couple…
A tour pairing Dirty South hit-makers Juvenile and Bubba Sparxxx may seem incongruous. On the surface, the rappers don’t share much in common: Juvenile’s upbringing in the rough Magnolia Projects of New Orleans is in contrast to Sparxxx’s childhood on a Georgia farm. Juvenile is known for slinging hoe-rific rhymes…
Christopher Lawrence is one of the overlords of techno trance, a globally lauded maestro of seizure-inducing beat alchemy. His harder, sometimes melancholic brand of trance and techno has made him America’s premier purveyor and innovator of the 4/4 trance genre. Homeboy just dropped his latest mix CD — his first…
New York City-based Lansing-Dreiden produces videos and art projects as well as music, but eschews interviews and live performance. Exactly how many members there are and what they play is unknown, the same ploy The Residents once used to force people to focus on the music, rather than the musicians…
Mark Pickerel, onetime drummer for Seattle cult faves The Screaming Trees, and who even did a short stint with Nirvana, steps up to center stage with a collection of dark, sullen tunes that blend country, rock and pop into a vaguely supernatural stew. Pickerel has a deep, sinister baritone with…
The last time I caught up with Ministry mastermind Al Jourgensen — just before the 2004 election, when he was opening shows by beating and simulating anal rape on a guy in a George W. Bush mask — the nearing-50 industrial-rock icon laid out his future plans: one or two…
Continuing through his Rolodex of distinguished sub-popular MCs, producer Danger Mouse moves on from last year’s MF Doom collaboration, The Mouse and the Mask, to this potent (if less amazing) team-up with former Goodie Mob member Cee-Lo. Lacking Mask’s Adult Swim tie-in gimmick as a comedic conceptual thrust, Elsewhere is…
