The back of Koko Taylor’s 1978 record The Earthshaker shows a black-and-white photo of the blues belter and her band in a smoke-filled bar, seated around a table that’s packed with bottles of booze, loose $10 bills, and Pall Mall cigarettes. Taylor is looking at the camera, disheveled hair falling…
Los Lobos exploded out of the barrios of Los Angeles in 1983 with and a time to dance, a seven-song mini-album that meshed Mexican folk music, blues, rock and R&B into a unique sound, long before the terms “Americana” and “roots rock” were standard music lingo. In the early ’90s,…
1. Iron & Wine, Woman King (Sub Pop) 2. Low, The Great Destroyer (Sub Pop) 3. Matt Sweeney and Bonnie Prince Billy, Superwolf (Drag City/Caroline) 4. Death Cab for Cutie, John Byrd EP (Barsuk) 5. M. Ward, Transistor Radio (Merge) 6. Mogwai, Government Commissions: BBC Sessions 1996-2003 (Matador) 7. The…
In recent years, James Murphy has undeniably helped direct the hipster strata of New York music. DFA, the label that he produces with partner Tim Goldsworthy, is the Neptunes of indieland, lending guidance and technical savvy to a who’s who of exploratory bands, from the Rapture to Black Dice to…
In the language of analog recording, “wow” and “flutter” were terms used to describe the distortion common to the recording process. The title of The Kills’ second album is obviously ironic, because the duo’s powerful, stripped-down sound is built on a foundation of fuzz, feedback and distortion. Hotel, a highly…
Tom Russell is best known as a hip cowboy/country singer-songwriter, and he’s always interesting in that capacity. But this new disc is something else entirely — it’s Russell’s odd, brilliant introduction and homage to the deviant geniuses who made life interesting in the last two-thirds of the 20th century. There’s…
The Swedish cats in Mando Diao have spent a long time with their British Invasion albums. On Bring ‘Em In, their debut salvo, their Beatles-meets-Yardbirds take on Brit pop combined an uncanny gift for melody with a fuzzed-out twin guitar attack. This time, the influences are more diverse, but the…
The rumors about ska’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Rude Boys have kept reinventing it again and again, and ska’s last incarnation, “the third wave,” saw its horns and tempo mixed with punk’s sound and drive, as exemplified by bands like the Voodoo Glow Skulls and MU330. Purists often deride…
Long before they entrenched themselves in a spat rivaling the East Coast/West Coast rivalry of Biggie and Tupac, former Smiths front man Morrissey and fellow sad sot Robert Smith of The Cure somehow produced an offspring, a sullen young’un named Jamie Stewart. Details are sketchy as to how said progeny…
Hot on the heels of fellow house-music visionary Bad Boy Bill’s visit to the ‘Nix, former tag-team collaborator and equally influential house producer Richard “Humpty” Vission is hitting town to get y’all’s asses shaking on the floor at Next on Wednesday, March 9. Humpty’s been tooling with the tables since…
The Hacienda Brothers are scheduled to perform on
Tuesday, March 1, at the Rhythm Room.
Burn to Shine is the kind of medium-rare concept you hatch at 4 a.m. with your best friend — except that Brendan Canty actually has resources and connections. Thus, the former bassist for the seemingly defunct Fugazi has created a video artifact in which eight bands play one song each…
1. Green Day, American Idiot (Warner Bros.) 2. Bright Eyes, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning (Saddle Creek) 3. Postal Service, Give Up (Sub Pop) 4. Muse, Absolution (Warner Bros.) 5. Bright Eyes, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn (Saddle Creek) 6. The Game, The Documentary (Aftermath) 7. Goldfinger, Disconnection Notice…
Few bands take up as much space on MySpace.com as Sunrise Elementary. The Glendale “pop/synth/piano/rock” quintet lists more than 130 bands as “influences,” from the audible (Reggie and the Full Effect, Hello Goodbye, The Postal Service, The Ataris) to the abstract (Dido, James Taylor, Vivaldi, REO Speedwagon). Sunrise Elementary’s litany…
Phoenix’s other gift to theatrical rock, the Tubes, challenged Alice Cooper’s supremacy with their similarly decadent front man Fee Waybill as Quay Lewd. Where Coop would camp it up with a boa constrictor, Quay Lewd would settle for a feathered boa — and more high heels than a random shelf…
His acoustic melodies and sweet songs come straight from the heart, but do not label Perry Allen emo; he simply won’t have it. Instead, the 16-year-old musician, who plays the piano, guitar and banjo, would rather have his music called “honest,” since the majority of his songs reflect experiences of…
Jon Rauhouse is one of the Valley’s wonders, a local pedal steel player who spends much of his time recording and touring with some of the best-known cutting-edge country talent in America — artists like Neko Case, Kelly Hogan, Sally Timms, Jon Langford, and the Grievous Angels. If you like…
Hardcore vets 7 Seconds have been around for 25 years now, and singer Kevin Seconds and gang won’t let you forget it on this 17-track, 28-minute set. “Don’t you tell me I’m being nostalgic/I’m not looking to go back in time,” Kev belts on “Our Core.” But he’s lying; just…
Texas-born maverick Roky Erickson is one of the great insane geniuses of rock ‘n’ roll. Shortly after “You’re Gonna Miss Me” became a huge hit for the 13th Floor Elevators, Erickson pleaded insanity to prevent doing hard time for a petty marijuana bust. After three years of shock therapy in…
Remember in the early ’90s flick Airheads, when Brendan Fraser and Steve Buscemi are standing at the door of a recently acquired radio station, testing an alleged music exec by quizzing, “Who would win in a fight: Lemmy or God?” Unlike that undercover cop, the men in Rapid Fire would…
The guys in Vistalance will be watching eBay for their stolen instruments, since some asshole stole their van (with all of their equipment inside) back in November. The local metal band’s losses totaled roughly $12,000 including the van, which has since been recovered, riddled with miles and reeking of piss…
The one-man-band scenario always carries a greater potential for silliness than your average act. Scott Wexton, a.k.a. the Voodoo Organist, is no stranger to kitsch himself, what with glow-skull stage props, excursions on the theremin (the geekiest instrument ever devised), and songs about being dipped in battery acid by the…
