Modern U.S. life sure is rubbish, asserts Koufax singer Robert Suchan on his Kansas-based quintet’s third album: We’ve got a cheater for a president (“Back and Forth”) conning the nation through a war (“Blind Faith”), but ignorance reigns supreme because the education system is a joke (“Why Bother At All”)…
A Wilhelm Scream may win the award for best song titles this year. Here are the top three: “The Kids Can Eat a Bag of Dicks,” a quick post-hardcore tune with a nice bass solo and an emo breakdown (no, that’s not a joke); “Me vs. Morrissey in the Pretentiousness…
A grotesque vegetable, psychedelic rock is rarely served on its own. But just a smidgen lends weight to pop, color to blues, brains to country, and space to dance music. Modey Lemon is that unusual band that takes it straight. On The Curious City, the Pittsburgh trio’s second album, fun-house…
The Red Chord must be familiar with European theater; the Boston band took its name from a German play in which a schizophrenic man slits his lover’s throat and then reverts to his normal self, asking, “My love, what is that red cord across your neck?” It’s both poetic and…
Anyone paying attention knows that punk bands are in a Zelig-like state of national confusion. So if Scandinavians can sound like Detroit rockers and the Japanese can capture British hardcore, then what seems so perverse about an L.A. band that embodies Boston street-punk? Maybe it’s just our familiarity with American…
1. Led Zeppelin, Houses of the Holy (Atlantic) 2. The Beatles, The Beatles (The White Album) (Apple) 3. Cream, Fresh Cream/Disraeli Gears (Atco) 4. Black Sabbath, Paranoid (Warner Bros.) 5. The Who, Who’s Next (Decca) 6. David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust (RCA) 7. Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland (Reprise) 8. The Beatles,…
Because indie rock has settled into a kind of polite earnestness best characterized by well-intentioned pasty-faces like Youth Group, and because electronica is slowly getting its corners sanded by the Postal Service, the next logical step was to combine the two. A number of bands have already fiddled with this…
Well, someone had to play OMD in rock ‘n’ roll’s never-ending ’80s remake — why not Minotaur Shock? We mean that as a compliment; essentially the work of one man, David Edwards, Maritime’s chipper, chirpy electro recalls both the spartan arrangements and the casual elegance of its British forebears. Nothing’s…
Thank you-know-who for Mormons, because we never would have had good ol’ blasphemous goth music otherwise. The blurry rear cover photo of element a440’s debut album makes the troubled trio of Halo, Trick and December look like Columbine trick-or-treaters (singer Halo looks especially spookish with his severely razored Nixon hairline),…
You could file Danny Barnes’ new album under folk, blues, old time, alt-country or gospel, but there isn’t a single category that defines his free-flowing acoustic alchemy. Barnes’ sparse banjo picking, and the high lonesome fiddling of Brittany Haas, makes the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” sound like an ancient…
This Avenue of the Arts MC may have shortened his moniker to Anglo-Saxon, but you can still call him Ill Al — he sure lives up to the name with incredible rhymes on his new disc, Unplug, which is being jointly released by two up-and-coming local indie labels, Grave 9…
If we didn’t have a certain amount of column space to fill, we’d just let Dance Disaster Movement’s name stand as everything you need to know about the band. You can dance to it, natch, you can wiggle and frug to the skittering, propulsive beats and bristling hooks. It’s a…
The year was 2000. I Am Shelby Lynne, the singer-songwriter’s declaration of independence after a career of genre-hopping and commercial frustration, had finally established her soulful, sultry country persona. At last, she didn’t need to listen to the charts or the label heads anymore — she was her own woman,…
Pelican is the Mars Volta for metalheads. It’s transcendent, complex and experimental. Unlike the Mars Volta, however, Pelican’s music flows so smoothly, a vocalist isn’t necessary to help the listener navigate the intricate aural landscape created by these four Chicago men. After inking with Hydrahead Records (Isis, Pig Destroyer), the…
You may not know his name, but Tony Moran has been a staple of the dance and pop scenes for years, having worked with mainstream artists like the Beach Boys, George Michael, Janet Jackson, and even Britney. These days, he focuses on working behind the turntables in the DJ booth,…
Apparently, no one told CKY it’s dangerous to hate on your boss. Or maybe someone did and CKY just doesn’t give a fuck. Either way, that’s just what the Pennsylvania band does. In their audacious, straightforward rock ‘n’ roll style, the instigators in CKY make a point to tell everyone…
A former pro surfer before a collision with a reef led him to reconsider his options, Jack Johnson got a great jump-start penning “Rodeo Clowns” with G. Love on a beach one weekend in 1999. Like Love, Johnson favors simmering acoustic-folk with a jazzy R&B undercurrent. The Hawaii native’s honeyed…
A Perfect Murder isn’t the same band it was two years ago. Back then, the Montreal group was likely to get tapped to open for Eighteen Visions. It was generic hardcore, “required” breakdowns and all, complete with unimaginative “I hate this world” lyrics. Then, three of the original members, including…
No matter which members of Minnesota’s The Soviettes are belting out the lyrics, they yell their brash vocals with a sense of urgency. Maybe it’s because the 14 songs on LP III are fast — and punk rock is always played fast, right? Sure, it’s easy to make “Fuck yeah!”…
Tim Armstrong (Op Ivy, Rancid) must love these guys. Suicide Machines alternates between ska and breakneck-paced old-school punk rock, and it’s a testament to the band’s skills that it brings off both better than most of its more single-minded peers. The Detroit quintet formed in the early ’90s, and its…
1. Sufjan Stevens, Illinois (Asthmatic Kitty) 2. All-American Rejects, Move Along (Interscope) 3. Coldplay, X&Y (Capitol) 4. Felt, Felt Vol. 2: A Tribute to Lisa Bonet (Rhymesayers) 5. Gorillaz, Demon Days (Virgin) 6. Jack Johnson, G. Love, Donovan Frankenreiter, Some Live Songs EP (Universal) 7. Röyksopp, The Understanding (Astralwerks) 8…
Two lyrical heroes of indie hip-hop team up to pay tribute to everyone’s favorite Cosby Show castoff, Lisa Bonet. Well, actually, Slug and Murs’ sweet memories of Denise Huxtable play only a minor role in the duo’s stories about the opposite sex. Felt Vol. 2 pops off with the picked…
