For a few weeks this past spring, the Dixie Chicks were the United States’ public enemy No. 1. (Well, numbers 1 through 3, anyway.) To country music fans — and to diehard patriots — the Chicks had the unmitigated gall to tell a British audience in March that they were…
Sorry — there won’t be any Missy Elliott or Snoop Dogg on this stop of the self-proclaimed “first true annual hip-hop festival.” Except for Fabolous, a rather anonymous platinum seller, each of these acts offers the best and most lucrative that rap has to offer in the 0-3. Channeling Shaggy…
For most Arizona bands, the arc they can expect their careers to take is not unlike that of the Sciannas. Take a bunch of transplanted musicians, in this case Connecticut-bred brothers Fran and Dan Scianna, and thrust them into a mystifying music scene where it takes months, even years, to…
By now, it seems, there is no story about Fleetwood Mac left to tell. No snort has gone undocumented, no betrayal unchecked. They sold millions of albums to people who knew the soap opera and wanted the soundtrack; they sold tons of concert tickets to those who needed to witness…
Phish launched the second set of its summer tour opener at the Cricket Pavilion in Phoenix July 7 with the agile rocker “Birds of a Feather.” The twentysomethings in the aisles looked thrilled, twirling and bouncing along to the song’s opening chords. And, just like the old days, someone next…
Whenever a critics’ favorite puts out a new album, you can expect a sizable rush to praise. The new one from Fountains of Wayne, Welcome Interstate Managers, is no exception. During the four years since their last release, fans of songwriting team Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood’s arch, classic-rock-referenced punk…
Once it’s cute. Twice it’s not so cute. Three times and it’s starting to get on my nerves. That’s the response you’d expect upon hearing that German DJ/producer Uwe Schmidt (a.k.a. Atom Heart) has taken another ride on the conga line as his alter ego, Señor Coconut. Disillusioned with the…
Sam Cooke spent his career trying to mesh his earthy, soulful instincts, steeped in gospel, with his drive for mainstream success. Although that dichotomy was not unique to Cooke, in his case it created a nice tension that puts even his most lightweight offerings on notice. Now, a newly remastered…
Like Rob Thomas before her, Michelle Branch got a shot of cred last year when she turned a Santana song into something better than it had any right to be. But “Game of Love” is no “Smooth,” and Branch, a 19-year-old who wants nothing to do with her generation, isn’t…
Sure, it might be possible to put together a better adult indie-rock double-bill in this day and age — but you’d have to really strain. Here, then, is a night of songs about being grown up, with potential, vision and a certain kind of warped love in your heart, but…
Hip-hop albums are an often-precarious exercise. Most are disappointing. The best-case scenario, in most cases, is pumping a couple of hot tracks onto a CD with 15 other songs and a few skits, intros, outros and promos — and those are the cuts that seem to get the most play…
Kellen Fortier amuses his Where Eagles Dare bandmates. While the other four members of the Valley punk band lounge at Coffee Plantation in Tempe, Fortier, their guitarist, excuses himself to quench a growing thirst. He returns with a neon sensation. The bizarre concoction doesn’t go unnoticed. “He’s got a purple…
is, at.
Matt McAuley, the guitar-playing half of A.R.E. Weapons, says the unusual band name came to him in a dream. “In the dream, [singer] Brain [F. McPeck] was a futuristic Blade Runner detective, and he had like a Philip Marlowe office and the name on the door was A.R.E. Weapons,” says…
I was listening to Neil Young’s 1983 album Trans before I wrote this column. Arguably one of the strangest albums made by a pop artist of Young’s stature, the album features six songs recorded with the now-antiquated synthesizers of the day and vocals filtered through a vocoder to sound like…
Tricky’s ascension to worldwide critical acclaim and not-unimpressive commercial prosperity was one of the more unlikely success stories of the 1990s, since for all it shared with the down-tempo chill-out fluff it’s inspired, Tricky’s music was the singularly difficult and complex product of a singularly difficult and complex mind. Maxinquaye…
With music that lingers somewhere between nü-metal and screeching performance art, the Locust has grandiose plans to change perceptions of what metal can be. Plague Soundscapes, a blitzkrieg of razor-blade-sharp intricacies and non-audible lyrics, is a 23-track tour of debauchery that kicks indie rockers in the teeth and flips off…
Hip-hop albums are an often-precarious exercise. Most are disappointing. The best-case scenario, in most cases, is pumping a couple of hot tracks onto a CD with 15 other songs and a few skits, intros, outros and promos — and those are the cuts that seem to get the most play…
General consensus long held that in the history of popular music, avant-garde elements are rarely digested easily by the masses, and that when they are, they go down best when sugarcoated. So, music progressives, let’s be thankful that one of the consequences of pop culture speeding up from “famous for…
Years in the countryside tend to mellow a fellow. It clearly worked on Matt Sharp, who materializes from a four-year hiatus with a haunting acoustic four-song EP titled Puckett’s Versus the Country Boy. If you didn’t know Sharp played bass for and co-founded Weezer and created the New Wave pop…
Melissa Etheridge must enjoy coming to Phoenix. This will be the popular and evidently tireless singer-songwriter’s fourth trip to town in the last three years, even though she hasn’t released a new album since 2001’s Skin. She’s been on the road virtually nonstop ever since. She played a show here…
StarTime International, the nascent one-man label, sits in the heart of a lo-fi cultural revolution, namely the parade of swaggering, throwback rockers and skinny-tie, ripped-fishnet fashion plates crawling these days out of Brooklyn and into parts unknown. Two years ago, Isaac Green’s creation signed the Walkmen and French Kicks, easily…
