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…
Brooklyn rhymer Kenyatta “Buckshot” Blake is one of many shoulda-been-huge MCs who suffered when hip-hop became a blinger’s game. However, despite legal battles, label struggles, and plain bad luck (Tupac was a fan, but died before he could get Buckshot’s career into overdrive), the Black Moon leader hasn’t given up…
Röyksopp’s debut disc, Melody A.M., produced mood-setting mix-tape fodder and soundtracked any room at a rave that came with a couch. The Understanding starts in the same vein, with parochial piano and a gentle percussive pulse, but then it turns the beat around, disco-style. Bop-gun bloops, vocoder murmurs, quick-click drums,…
Few may have noticed, but history of sorts was made this past March with the release of Now That’s What I Call Music! Volume 18. For the first time since Now! Volume 3’s triple bang opener of Smash Mouth, Lenny Kravitz, and blink-182 last millennium, an installment of this best-selling…
The Michigan songwriter has promised to write a song for every state, and while that may sound ambitious, with his talent, don’t doubt the possibility. He certainly isn’t going anywhere. Stevens is a nimble songwriter heavily influenced by early ’70s pop melodicism, but while he can go in for a…
Head Automatica is the brainchild of Daryl Palumbo — you probably know him as “that guy from Glassjaw.” He may have started out screaming for a rap-metal band, but he says he always wanted to make party music. So he picked the perfect partner in Dan “The Automator” Nakamura, a…
Pit er Pat is like a Long Island iced tea — what sounds like a nasty concoction actually turns out to be pretty good. And ends up messing with your head. One part Alkaline Trio, one part Neutral Milk Hotel (speaking of) and, figuratively, one part Blonde Redhead, the members…
While Jason Hill’s leering-stalker routine may be a truer reflection of male sexuality than the typical smooth playboy act, that doesn’t mean it makes for satisfying rock ‘n’ roll. Even the Louis XIV singer’s most obvious influence, T. Rex’s Marc Bolan, was not just some solitary rake, but the toastmaster…
The members of Ozomatli are a product of their environment. Like their Los Angeles home, their music’s a melting pot of foreign and indigenous sounds. Reggae, salsa, funk, hip-hop, jazz and Latin music all show up in the bustling gumbo of styles. With so many influences flowing in and out,…
