A decade ago, it wouldn’t have been difficult to imagine the Vans Warped Tour sputtering out long before the final year of the Mayan calendar. How could it even be possible to keep the freewheeling tour — uniting rock, punk, and everything-in-between bands — for 19 years? But it bears…
It’s a title match for the ages: dubstep versus bro-step. In one corner, we have dubstep, which draws its lineage from the various incarnations of dance music that squirreled around the U.K. (garage, two-step, drum ‘n’ bass) 10 or 15 years ago. Dubstep is accentuated by a creepy-crawling undercurrent. You…
Time marches on. And tours like Summerland — featuring ’90s pop heroes Everclear, Sugar Ray, Lit, Gin Blossoms, and Marcy Playground — are there to remind us that it’s doing so, to remind us that we’re getting older, to capitalize on our fading adolescent memories. I was born in 1987;…
See also: 10 Phoenix Bands You Need to Hear This Summer Electronic duo Being Cool Is Lonely get sex appeal. Their new single, “Bones and Boots,” is deliciously infectious and more than a little sinister. Along with the new song, the duo’s been updating their Soundcloud page with remixes by…
I know there’s a name for the keyboard sound that sounds like a cross between a dude belching and scat singing, but I can’t figure it out. No matter, I guess. The sound effect’s hardly the most notable thing about “Kanye,” the web-only exclusive MP3 advancing Phoenix duo Bogan Via’s…
It must be true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, at least it is in the case of Beachwood Sparks. The Los Angeles band’s perfect evocation of what the late, great Gram Parsons famously called “Cosmic American Music” — an inspired blend of country, soul, folk, blues and rock…
See also: Hoodlums Music Turns 13: Reflections From Owner Steve Wiley See also: Hoodlums to Host “Hoodstock” Festival to Benefit Tempe’s Broadmor Elementary Sad news out of Tempe today: Hoodlums Music and Movies is going into “hibernation” on Wednesday, August 15. It’s a curious term, hibernation, but according to the…
See also: Bad Lucy Covers Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” Local psychedelic folksters Wooden Indian would be well suited to cover a band with a similar music style like Grizzly Bear or Animal Collective, so it was a little surprising to find out that they know a song by The…
See also: Packrat Ready to Bring the Noise to Rogue Bar Experimental prog-punk rockers Packrat might be going through a lineup shakeup at the moment, but that hasn’t derailed core members Brandon Wilson and Rodrigo Ibieta from making new music. Emmit Thatcher renounced his position as the band’s drummer earlier…
There’s no diggity, no doubt that we’re oddly delighted to hear that Blackstreet’s hitting the road, and with Ginuwine, no less. These ’90s R&B crooners are going to tear up the stage at the Celebrity Theatre with some of your favorite hits from around 15 years ago. Blackstreet’s got us excited,…
As much as everyone might be sick of Carly Rae Jepsen’s smash hit “Call Me Maybe,” none of us can get the song out of our heads, much to our chagrin. Let’s admit it: We’re all secretly jamming out when we’re all alone in our car or bedroom. We’re not…
Every Monday morning Up on the Sun features a new comic strip from punk rocker, cartoonist, and dad Brad Dwyer. See the New Times print edition to check out the strip in glorious, inky newsprint each Thursday…
While most DJs are content with having only one slick-sound moniker, Matthew Hinman has almost a half-dozen nom de guerres at his disposal. Depending on the particular gig he’s working, the 39-year-old could be performing as Spyder, Franck Matthews, Cosmic Sea, or any of the other idenities he’s developed during…
Where we’re going, we don’t need roads; just a synthesizer, eyeliner, and a touch of androgyny. Welcome to Flashback Friday. The ’80s weren’t all bright chords and poppy dance songs. The emergence of new wave also ushered in the era of the slow, ghoulish drones of goth rock. Phoenix’s resident…
Jackie Morales Morales is the mid-day DJ for 101.5-FM Jamz. When you put your key in the ignition and turn on the radio, what station would play right now? Of course, 101.5! What’s the first album you bought? I honestly don’t go out and buy very many albums, but when…
Seeing the Dead Kennedys without Jello Biafra is kind of like seeing the reformed Misfits — it’s just not quite the same when it’s only Jerry Only, but that’s better than nothing, right? Or is it? Jello hasn’t performed with the Kennedys since the band’s split in 1986, but the…
Plenty of people visit the merch stand at concerts. Some people buy an item with the intent to wear it again and again, and it unexpectedly becomes destined to live on the top shelf of a closet where it won’t be seen again for years. Others sport their band merch…
See also: Joel Marquard Makes a Mess of Gospel With The Through and Through Gospel Review If history has shown us anything in the local music and arts scene, it’s that the community has a fierce love of its own champions. That love will be on full display on Saturday,…
This week, New Times ran a list in our print publication highlighting some of the most interesting posts published at Up on the Sun over the past week. Here are links to those posts. What five releases are we most excited for this summer? We ask: Are local band residencies…
Just as fortunetellers have their little fishing expeditions to crack a sucker’s psyche, so, too, rock writers have their shortcuts on deconstructing a band’s sound without using the dreaded catch-all phrase “eclectic” (which, in truth, we’ve already exhausted in this article’s headline). Here’s the laziest methodology: Just ask the band…
“I’m not particularly that brilliant,” El-P says, laughing. “It takes me longer to do something worthy of putting out.” The Brooklyn-based rapper, former label head, and indie hip-hop stalwart isn’t bothered by the five years it took to put together his latest collection, Cancer 4 Cure (out now via Fat…
Ian Astbury, throat of the long-running British rock band The Cult, doesn’t appreciate his band being reduced to “dumb rock ‘n’ roll” by hipsters. Not one bit. “The illuminated, erudite, indie, or post-modern culture, whatever — it almost serves them to shove people like us out of the room,” Astbury…
