In her self-indulgent, autobiographical R&B album I Am Right Here, Phoenix’s Jodi Light does her best Erykah Badu impersonation. Complete with an awkward voice-over introduction that defines the album’s title and its intentions, the disc is an odd celebration of, well, Jodi Light — the spoken intro ends with a…
At one point on her new album This Is Not a Test!, Missy Elliott defines her style as “old-school rap to old-school R&B.” That’s pretty accurate. Back in the ’80s, when George Clinton and Roger Troutman spiked their funk and disco with synthesizer machines and vocoder, then cut down their…
If current trends are any indication, we’re going to be hearing a lot about acid in the coming months. Not the chemical that bound Haight to Ashbury to create 1967’s Summer of Love, but the catalyst behind the other so-called Summer of Love, in 1988, when thousands of British teenagers…
The title track of Denali’s second album, The Instinct, opens with the sound of a machine pulsing a little too hard, its fate underscored by a dusky keyboard vibrato. Four bars in, Maura Davis’ weary voice drapes over the rhythm like an oversize trench coat, accompanied by broken guitar chords:…
When you see a flier with a picture of a girl screaming as she is being — ahem — serviced in a stall of a Mexican washroom, you should name your band after the lone word describing the scene: Kinky. That’s what Gilberto Cerezo and mates did a while back,…
David Allan Coe, unlike some of his peers, didn’t have to manufacture outlaw cred for the outlaw-country movement of the 1970s. Coe essentially grew up incarcerated, first tangling with the system at age 9 and spending the next 20 years more or less behind bars. When he emerged, he had…
Though it doesn’t sound like a particularly good idea, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, an all-star punk-rock cover band, transforms frothy pop songs by the likes of James Taylor and Lionel Richie, which should make any self-respecting punk sick to his stomach, into raging karaoke numbers, which often blow…
David Dondero, of course, is not the first windblown wanderer seduced by the romantic allure of the road. As integral to the culture as the endless paved arteries crisscrossing between coasts coursing with this nation’s vitality, our itinerant nature has cast its story upon our land’s expansive canvas countless times…
Travis Graves, a.k.a. Mt. Egypt, has friends in high places, which is the only explanation for his fledgling act’s phenomenal luck at performing alongside legends of both rock and country. Mt. Egypt, whose first LP, Battening the Hatches, was released this past summer, experienced its inaugural tour (with Mr. Graves…
I’ve been a huge Michael Jackson fan for most of my life. I mean, you couldn’t attend a mostly black elementary school in 1983 and not worship Michael. To this day, to me, he’s just Michael. Michael was the African-American equivalent of a Greek god, and he had an uncanny…
Unless you have an abnormal need for drink coasters, the demo CD is usually the music journalist’s worst nightmare. But every once in a while something uniquely interesting slips through and becomes something other than an inanimate companion to my late-night glass of Cristal. I was handed a CD by…
Ten-gallon hats off to Toby Keith. As the No. 1 ticket in America, the oil-riggin’ good ol’ boy-cum-new country badass has actualized the great American dream. He was well on his way to solidifying himself as country’s plain-talkin’ top dog even before his less-than-sensitive “Angry American” response to 9/11 kicked…
These days, any band that ventures into post-rock territory is bound to be compared with Mogwai, which is akin to every trip-hop/down-tempo/chill-out act being written off as a DJ Shadow knockoff. Although Canadian quintet Do Make Say Think shares its Scottish predecessors’ knack for stop-start commotion, the details in Winter…
“Durannies” have been waiting 18 years for the original Duran Duran — drummer Roger Taylor, guitarist Andy Taylor, bassist John Taylor, singer Simon LeBon and keyboardist Nick Rhodes — to reunite, tour and record. The recording has taken some time, so they decided to hit the road instead, and generate…
A lot of country singers seemingly adopt the title of American hero because they sing about the working class and national pride. But Craig Morgan truly can call himself that — a hero. During his 11 years of active duty in the U.S. Army, Morgan, who trained elite combat units,…
It’s not easy getting into Jay-Z’s recording home at Bassline Studios, tucked away on West 26th Street in Manhattan. I have to sneak in behind a woman walking into the building, take an elevator to the eighth floor, and knock on a pair of glass doors before a security guard…
There are certainly worse ways to end a long and fruitful career at a major record label than compiling 31 hard-to-find B-sides, outtakes and other rarities. But it’s hard to imagine Pearl Jam, whose decade-plus relationship with Epic Records ends with the release of this new double CD, choosing any…
What amazes women most about that contraption called man is his knack for never asking the pertinent questions. Like “How can a guy be friends with another guy for years and not know what he does for a living?” Or “How can we find it on Mapquest if you don’t…
There was a time when being a “greaser” was a sort of calling and not a pejorative reference to Mexicans. For greasers, like the Travolta caricature in Grease, the Fonz and Sly Stallone in The Lords of Flatbush, and the British “rockers,” every day was Halloween — the leather jackets,…
Tupac is dead. Long live Tupac! Never has a cliché rung so eerily true. Given the cTircumstances — he was mortally wounded in Las Vegas in 1996 — Tupac remains surprisingly prolific. Albums like The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory; R U Still Down? (Remember Me); Still I Rise;…
Talk about an overload! There’s so much action inside Kish Kash, the Basement Jaxx’s romper-stomper of a third album — bells, clicks, grunts and 808 squeals accenting every single beat atop the heavy strings, brass and accouterments — you don’t know whether to head-bang or have a heart attack. From…
Oh, the can of worms calling your record Yoko opens. Let’s break it down: Yoko is considered by many to be the evil force that broke up the Beatles. She’s also the inspiration and love interest of one of the great pop songwriters. So what exactly did Miles Kurosky and…
