Talented songwriter k.d. lang clearly has learned a few things from spending so much time around Tony Bennett. The two have been recording together since they released 2002’s A Wonderful World, and on her latest disc, you can hear the influence of Bennett in her approach to singing. Throughout Watershed,…
The Mars Volta switches gears on its fourth album, giving beat-propelled dance pop a spin. We kid! The Bedlam in Goliath is stuffed with nine-minute alt-prog epics — the type the band has refined to blood-drawing sharpness over the past seven years. We’re not quite sure what singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala…
When political times get tough, artists get dreamy. Stuck in the Vietnam War and immersed in the civil rights movement, musicians in the ’60s engaged in psychedelic escapism. Fumbling through the Iraq War and trapped in the murky quicksand of the economy, the current political tenor resembles the chaotic ’60s…
Old Time Relijun subscribes to three basic tenets of life: Eat, drink, fuck. Bred in Olympia, Washington, the band’s sound is primal and urgent — as if barnyard animals were rioting through an uppity art college. The three-piece, fronted by enigmatic vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Arrington de Dionyso, makes music like…
At some point, Lemonheads frontman Evan Dando must have realized that no one really knew who he was. It most likely happened sometime earlier in this decade, when he was trying to make it as an alt-country troubadour — just like Gram Parsons, one of his musical heroes. Dando didn’t…
Before Winger was the butt of many jokes, the Denver-bred Bon Jovi doppelganger and his bandmates undoubtedly had busloads of Betties on standby in every ZIP code and printed their own money, thanks to two consecutive albums that went platinum (a feat nearly unheard of in the Digital Age). Little…
Despite his salacious pseudonym, we’ve got absolutely zero idea of how gifted Kevin the Makeout Bandit is at the art of heavy petting. What we do know, however (other than the fact it takes some serious cojones to advertise your abilities at getting down) is that the dude is pretty…
We were all over the east side on Saturday, February 23, looking for just the right party. We hit Tempe Marketplace, but after one glance at the endless lines filled with ASU duders, we discovered that our patience had run too thin for the hustle and bustle. So we changed…
If Supernature was Goldfrapp’s ode to stylish disco saturnalia, Seventh Tree is the elegy for the inevitable “Suicide Tuesdays”: when clubbers ache to dispel that raisin-y, dried-out feeling and the Roland TB-303 drum beats still pounding in their heads. Once galvanized by the opiated synergy that exists between beats and…
On this document of their 2007 world tour, the Barcelona-based, self-styled “hip-hop flamenco” band plays music from their latest studio recording of the same name, while also going through some material from their back catalog, delivering a high-energy performance that can be felt right from the first moment. “Sultanas de…
There aren’t very many guitar-slingers who could consistently work with such exacting taskmasters as Frank Zappa and Robert Fripp, not to mention the thin white duck, er, duke — David Bowie. Usual suspects: a) Tom Verlaine; b) Adrian Belew; c) Gary Sinise. If you chose “b,” congrats! Between 1978-2002, Belew…
In the past dozen years, Against Me! singer Tom Gabel’s gone from being an Americanized Billy Bragg strumming angrily against the man to a rock juggernaut with enough fist-in-the-air intensity to rival the anthemic agit-prop of the Clash. Last summer, the Gainesville, Florida quartet made the leap to the majors…
Here’s a no-brainer: The radio situation here in the PHX sucks a fat one. Between annoying adverts for overpriced car stereos and overplayed earworms like “Hey There Delilah,” we’d rather spend our drive time listening to static instead of another insipid 20-minute mix. If only those wastes of airtime had…
Think what you may, but at the very least, you can always count on black metal for its directness. You can count on it to be exactly what it is and nothing more or less. With album titles like Bondage Goat Zombie and Goatreich-Fleshcult, the Satan-worshippers of Austrian outfit Belphegor…
“Emperors of Japan” sounds like something somebody would name their band while under the influence of psychedelic drugs. The Phoenix band sounds like it’s on a fabulous trip, too. Their latest album, Activator, opens with a song called “The Jesus Bee,” which is all woozy surf guitar with indecipherable, upper-register…
While 18-year-old guitarist and principal Eyes Set to Kill songwriter Alexia Rodriguez’s lyrical phrasing continues to advance, her preoccupation with depressive themes suggests a deeper wisdom already at work. She may not have known it at the time, but ever since she first scrawled her band’s name in her notebook,…
In this new Putumayo collection, we look at a variety of jazz-inflected, electronically inspired songs that come mostly from Western Europe and are influenced by the many Middle-Eastern and Latin musicians who live there today. One of the first tracks to catch your attention is Toufic Farrouk’s “Destins et Désirs,”…
Jack Johnson would undoubtedly make a wonderful dinner companion. Unlike the average rock star, who might well break the good china, wipe his face on the curtains, call your mom the C-word, and violate your Pomeranian, he’d be charming and kind, even if he found out you use environmentally unfriendly…
If a guy looks like the missing link between Bat Boy and a young Jason Vorhees (in that scene at the end of Friday the 13th where the, um, rather intent-looking lad shoots out of the water) and plays it up, then you know he’s probably got no shame about…
Though Waters, Gilmour, & Company are no longer touring as a band (their last appearance was at Live 8 in the summer of 2005), Floyd fans have a good opportunity to experience the band’s music in a theatrical format in this show that covers the band’s career, from classics like…
If you combined Elvis Costello’s pop sensibility with the White Stripes’ early, stripped-down sound and Weezer’s geek chic, you’d have something like Los Angeles indie trio Miniature Tigers. Sans bassist, the group’s songs tend to hang on the high end, but with all the colorful jangle and grit of garage…
Over the past year, the Goat Head Saloon, 1423 South Country Club Drive in Mesa, has given groovy types around the PHX a place to trip out and chillax to the kind sounds of local jam bands and other irie musicians. And now, the Mesa jam shack will be taking…
