Rock critics can’t resist calling Of Montreal “sunny,” and there’s plenty of truth to that description. Since 1997, the Athens, Georgia-based band has put out seven albums of whimsical pop psychedelia that plays with shimmering, sophisticated layers of guitar and keyboard melody, over-the-top vocal harmonies, surreal lyrics, and unpredictable arrangements,…
In a recent New York Times article that disputes the age-old link between creativity and depression, author Peter D. Kramer claims that it is “depression — and not resistance to it or recovery from it — that diminishes the self.” Devoted acolytes of Nine Inch Nails major-domo Trent Reznor would…
At least another hour is left until touring headliners The Perceptionists are set to perform at the Old Brickhouse Grill on a recent Saturday night, but there are already hundreds of people in the house. When a startling siren blasts through huge speakers and a dense swarm of fans crowds…
It’s Kentucky Derby Saturday and I’m sitting at the bar of the Fiesta Inn in Tempe with Charlie Levy, the promoter behind Stateside Presents and man-behind-the-curtain at Western Tread Records, which he runs with Jimmy Eat World front man Jim Adkins. I’ve asked him here because I’ve known the bespectacled,…
Scott Herren (a.k.a. Prefuse 73) awoke one morning this past February to find that his new album, Surrounded by Silence, had been linked to the Internet a full three months before its scheduled release. While this is an increasingly common phenomenon, it didn’t make the pill any easier to swallow…
While you may not hear an obvious Smashing Pumpkins influence when listening to Stiletto Formal, the Phoenix indie-core band says it gets all gooey over Corgan and crew. On its MySpace profile, the band declares that the Smashing Pumpkins are one of their collective favorite bands. Good thing, too. Stiletto…
“Fuck trout! Trout are pussies!” my good friend John Rupp declared into the microphone while dancing onstage at the Rogue late last year during local roots/bluegrass/hillbilly trio Flathead’s set. Dressed in a homemade catfish costume (originally fabricated for Halloween), complemented by metal-tipped snakeskin shoes, Catfish John made his debut appearance…
Which came first, our iPods or our eclectic tastes? It wasn’t all that long ago when music lovers picked a team and stayed loyal to it. Hip-hop heads devoted their eardrums to rhyme and beats, punks immersed themselves in . . . punk. If you were a fan of, say,…
Two First Fridays ago, xrayok played in the parking lot outside Fate restaurant, glowing in a blue spotlight and framed by inky black tree branches shaking in the wind. A storm was about an hour away, threatening the party vibe, but the band plugged in anyway, and the irresistible opening…
The Valley seems to have finally come into its own within the sphere of hip-hop, with nary a night lacking a jam-packed beats and rhymes expo somewhere in town, and national touring acts hitting metro Phoenix all the time. “We’re putting Arizona on the map,” local promoter Adam “Dumperfoo” Dumper…
The pop ledger is littered with entries for bands that failed to make it despite huge inventories of creativity and talent, but instead found their legacy in the parts other bands might salvage off them. The Wonder Stuff scored 17 Top 20 singles in the U.K., and even a U.S…
A couple of Sunday afternoons ago, about an hour before the New Times Music Showcase began, I was drinking a beer at the Tavern on Mill with Natalie Espinosa, guitarist and singer for local girl trio and Best Indie Rock nominee Bella, talking about her band’s impending last-ever show, trying…
Some things only get better with age. Looking back at the 10th annual New Times Music Showcase, which shook up Tempe’s Mill Avenue last Sunday, April 17, it’s clear that local music fans have not only made the event a tradition, but stepped up their support more than ever. With…
Ahhh, free pornography. I’m happily back on the grid and into the glaring free light of the digital world now that broadband Internet service has returned to my home office. Free to download 20-second sample video clips off a billion girlie sites, or pull them from others’ computers with peer-to-peer…
U2 has gone from the band that mattered most to arguably the most irrelevant. There, I said it. But just because I threw myself on the proverbial cross and fessed up, I don’t expect you to go out and hawk your tickets to either of U2’s sold-out shows at Glendale…
In a town full of Mormons and mega-churches and one of the largest Christian hip-hop movements in the country, Cole Massey couldn’t find religion. “I went to a bunch of churches around town, asking them what they offered for a 29-year-old single guy looking for some hard-core theology,” Massey, co-founder…
You need look no further than a John Hughes movie (or your own adolescence) to realize that jocks and freaks don’t really mix. But occasionally, the seemingly disparate paths of pro athletes and musicians do cross, from jocks trying to be rockers (Jack McDowell, Scott Radinsky) to rockers honoring jocks…
Most of the songs The Reflection plays end in the same raucous fashion: with the howl of two overamped guitars, loudly reverberating on the same chord, holding the tone like a musical staring contest between the players until one of them blinks and the pitch veers off in unpredictable and…
It’s the second Friday night in a row I’ve been hanging out in Heather Rae Johnson’s living room, listening to Johnson and her husband, Shannon Marino, roll through the repertoire of honky-tonk and hillbilly country tracks they play as Heather Rae and Her Moonshine Boys, peppered liberally with covers of…
T.S. Eliot dubbed April “the cruelest month,” but even The Waste Land neglected to point out that National Humor and National Anxiety Month share the same calendar page. As do National Welding Month, International Guitar Month, and Uh-Huh Month, which might quicken the failing hearts of John Cougar Mellencamp devotees…
Right now, Atlantic Records is giving the star treatment to San Diego’s Louis XIV, whose first full-length for the company, The Best Little Secrets Are Kept, hit stores on March 22. But what happens if the disc doesn’t sell 200,000 copies in its first week? Will Atlantic stick by the…
Bare-shouldered girls with asymmetrical haircuts and slouchy boots roam in pairs, while shaggy rocker boys in tee shirts and tight jeans wander the sidewalks in packs. Waiting in line outside of clubs among the messenger-bag-and-cell-phone-toting industry types, there’s a higher than normal presence of Japanese girls and lanky, bearded dudes…
