Marah is a jangly, soulful, gritty, streetwise roots-rock outfit from Philadelphia with a number of friends in high places, some of them better for business than others. Bruce Springsteen loves ’em — he’s given them a big boost by appearing on their albums and inviting them to open gianormous stadium…
Sure, any group can record 10 unhappy tracks in a row and call it an album, but it takes truly accomplished visionaries to make 10 miserable songs into a riveting audiomovie you’d stay to watch the credits for. To the guppies, misery isn’t just a mood, it’s an expansive landscape…
And so we come to last call at the House of GBV, and it’s hard not to get a bit misty. For whatever indifference or disappointment greeted anything he’d made since Under the Bushes, over the years, Bob Pollard had become a bit like The Dude — we took comfort…
What comes to mind when you think of Salt Lake City, Utah? Luxurious homes, looming Mormon tabernacles, men with multiple wives and a dozen little kids, all laughing and running across manicured green lawns toward their SUVs? The Salt Lake City stigma may stick to uncomfortable places, but take a…
These Swedish Jennie bombs came to American attention in 2002 as the female counterpart to the Hives, whose front man Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist dates lead Hotnight Maria Andersson. On their kick-ass third album, the Saharas get away from that easy comparison, sharpening the hooks in their wily garage-pop tunes and…
Boasting a pair of members from metalcore/noise rock pioneers Today Is the Day, Atlanta’s Mastodon follows a similar path, breaking the death-metal mold with unusual time signatures and breaks, passages of rich melody, and a kitchen sink of eclectic sonic textures, couched in an intermittently sludgy, brutal attack worthy of…
The very essence of wacky irreverence, Camper Van Beethoven created music like sonic Unabombers, lobbing folk-inflected conundrums into the marketplace. Whether penning a polka-punk tune like “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” naming its second album II & III, or rerecording Fleetwood Mac’s entire Tusk album while snowbound together in a cabin,…
Xiu Xiu’s emotionally charged synth-pop finds comfort in ’80s music and late-20th-century composers, and finds inspiration in art-rock “do this or die” ideals. On its latest LP, Fabulous Muscles, the San Jose, California-based band pushes keyboards, guitars, violins and drum sets to their physical limits to create sweeping melodies with…
On the beginning of “Hey Y’all” — a track from Approach’s Ultra Proteus full-length, a buffed-up version of his 2002 debut EP — the Kansas City MC makes his intentions clear: “It’s time to do Grandma’s funky popcorn.” While the indie rapper may name-check such rap luminaries as A Tribe…
The Psychedelic Furs have pretty much been a mainstay in alternative rock since the late 1970s, save for a few blips on the radar for lead singer Richard Butler’s solo work and his side project, Love Spit Love. Even though they are not pushing a new album or material, the…
Top 10 selling CDs at Hoodlums (ASU Memorial Union Building in Tempe) for the week of August 2 through 8: 1. The Roots, The Tipping Point (Geffen) 2. Jadakiss, Kiss of Death (Ruff Ryders) 3. Ashlee Simpson, Autobiography (Geffen) 4. The Cure, The Cure (Geffen) 5. Damien Rice, The B-Sides…
With their saccharine-sweet hit “Love Fool,” Swedish pop band the Cardigans were poised to rise above the mid-’90s glut of female-fronted bands like Republica, Chumbawamba, Sneaker Pimps, and Garbage. But although they found success, selling more than 10 million albums worldwide, they suffered from the curse of the one-hit wonder…
You don’t hear many kids saying they want to be in an adult alternative band when they grow up — and no wonder. Unlike punk, ska, metal, industrial and prog rock, adult alternative is perhaps the only genre based not on rebellion but rather redistribution and revision. It’s where people…
Kudos to the members of this Brooklyn hardcore-jazz-tech-metal-hip-hop-spazz-out hybrid for coming back for more after a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler. The aftermath of the crash, which caused critical injuries for some of the band members, is documented on the album cover with photos of the band’s demolished van. It…
This is the Velvets’ last stand, captured on a portable cassette recorder on August 23, 1970, shortly before Lou Reed left the band. Containing an extra hour of performances, the release of the expanded version gave us a chance to speak to guitarist Doug Yule, who still plays music but…
With Soulfly — the band he’s been fronting since a less-than-pleasant split with metal giants Sepultura eight years ago — Max Cavalera has been on a mission to both delight and challenge his longtime followers. While there’s no lack of hardcore bark and guitar growl on the band’s latest album,…
One day back in 1969, Winston Rodney was walking through the hills of St. Ann’s, Jamaica, when he ran into Bob Marley, who was on his way to his farm with a donkey, some buckets, and some plants. Rodney told Marley he wanted to get involved in the music business,…
It’s rare to find a band that convincingly blurs the line between smart and smart-ass without seeming uptight, but Fleshies pull it off with the simplicity of putting a match to a stick of dynamite. These lo-fi hellions blast the kind of loud, relentless guitar fury that reminds us that…
Veteran producer and beatmaker BT (a.k.a. Brian Transeau) won’t be manning the turntables for his upcoming performance at the Marquee Theatre in Tempe on Tuesday, August 17. Instead, for the first time in four years, he will be appearing with a full band to perform the ethereal soundscapes that have…
Assembled from a stockpile of 150 cassettes that turned up, inexplicably, at a public library in California, Khmer Folk & Pop is a riveting example of cultural cross-pollination. It’s also a fitting first stop for anyone still frightened off by the frou-frou “World Music” genre tag: The most interesting thing…
From all accounts, Denver-based screamo/hardcore foursome Planes Mistaken for Stars flat-out leveled stages on the recent politically charged Plea for Peace tour, stealing the thunder from headliners Cursive with jackknifing Mack truck riffs and gone-haywire howls. And their dirtbag, anti-emo pretty-boy looks (they’ve been referred to as “an entire group…
Dinah Cancer wants you to know that she is not goth. Goth connotes mopery, and as a wicked woman of the night, Cancer does not mope — she prowls. “I do carry a fondness for dead things,” Cancer writes on her Web site. “I’d always worn and had a very…
