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,…
Glass Candy is a conundrum, something sweet surrounding something dangerous. Ida No is one of punk’s most captivating front women: ferocious, whispering, screeching and wailing herself into a barefoot tizzy. Taking cues from ’70s punk, glam and disco, Johnny Jewel keeps the music minimal, focusing on driving the songs forward…
Because Los Angeles is a music-industry center, a lot of artists from the area devote themselves to conformity — yet for some strange, unexplained reason, SoCal’s underground hip-hop scene remains a bastion of originality. The Shape Shifters epitomize this contradiction. Featuring mouthpieces Akuma, AWOL One, Circus, Die, Existereo, Life Rexall,…
1. Felt, Felt, Vol. 2: A Tribute to Lisa Bonet (Rhymesayers) 2. Manic Hispanic, Grupo Sexo (BYO Records) 3. 3 Melancholy Gypsies, Grand Caravan to the Rim of the World (Legendary Music) 4. The Regulations, The Regulations (Havoc) 5. Look Back and Laugh, Look Back and Laugh (Lengua Armada) 6…
Like the comforting inevitability of nature’s cycles, Fruit Bats’ Eric Johnson returns every two years with more woodsy acoustic numbers that crawl out of the underbrush to feel the warmth of the sun. Spelled in Bones continues to revel in pastoral delights, but Johnson gives the new album a little…
Considering that son simply means “song,” one can imagine a wide definition. Indeed, this homegrown Cuban music developed from numerous styles more than a century ago, though most featured the defining tres (a guitar with three sets of equally tuned strings). If that instrument is the definitive sound, Sierra Maestra…
For the past 10 years, Bob Mould has been busy battling tinnitus, paying the bills by writing TV scripts for professional wrestling (!), and indulging a newfound passion for club music. With Body of Song, he returns from the wilderness to hard, passionate pop-rock — though he’s blissfully indifferent to…
There’s a never-ending supply of the young, loud and snotty picking through the rock trash heap, but the legions of glam punk godfathers are few. While many of his peers lived fast and died young — or simply settled into comfortable obscurity — singer and guitarist Jeff Dahl has maintained…
If they really wanted to bring tantrum suppression to an amphitheater near you, they might’ve added The Game or Jah Rule or Triumph the Insult Dog to the bill. But this is more like a Rap Pack love fest, with Eminem most certainly Chairman of the Board, crunked-up Lil Jon…
It’s a morbid business, but most practical editors in the journalism racket have a folder filled with pre-written obituaries all ready to go for seriously ill, soon-to-be-departed public figures of import. John Prine undoubtedly found his way into some of those folders in 1998, when he was stricken with cancer…
Half the fun of being a power-pop fan is digging up bits of manna that five other people have ever heard and grousing that they should’ve been hits. And while there’s no shortage of lilters with one great tune — ever hear of Suzy Saxon or the band Candy? –…
You can’t take the country out of the boy, but at some point it just becomes a strut, an air, a way of rocking. Though Lucero started out sounding neo-traditional enough to have followed Son Volt, Ben Nichols and his partner Brian Venable were punks looking to cheek off their…
When musical boundaries correspond to racial ones, bands usually cross them self-consciously, from The Clash’s tributes to early rap, to Mos Def’s “Ghetto Rock.” On the other hand, Atlanta’s El Pus (rhymes with “moose”) came to party rather than fulfill some social mission. On Hoodlum Rock, Vol. 1, the all-black…
For the past six years, The Briefs have been sticking Seattle’s mopey indie-rock ass with a healthy shot of ’77-style punk rock, and the fun is quickly spreading nationally. The quartet’s sound pledges allegiance to such forebears as the Ramones, the Buzzcocks, the Vibrators, and the Rezillos — their style…
It’s perfectly fine to be gay (Rob Halford) or a doddering old fart (Ozzy), but there’s simply no crying in metal, unless maybe your drummer bro gets run over by a U-Haul trailer in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. That’s why Megadeth front man Dave Mustaine is still a bit of a punch…
