Valley Bands Sweat It Out on Warped Tour Stages

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…

U.S. Dubstep More Fun Than Its U.K. Cousin, Says Porter Robinson

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…

Summerland Tour Courts the Nostalgia Market

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;…

Download: Bogan Via’s Sparkling, Pulsing “Kanye”

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…

Hoodlums Music and Movies in Tempe To Close in August (Temporarily?)

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…

Take Cover: Wooden Indian Covers The Rapture

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…

Packrat Explains “Vultures of Knowledge”

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…

Obsessed with “Call Me Maybe?” You’re Not Alone

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…

Jackie Morales, What Are You Listening To?

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…

Dead Kennedys Are Coming to Tempe (Sans Jello)

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…

From Print: Blogs Teased in Our June 21 Issue

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…

Eclecticism Is The Elephant in the Room by Banana Gun

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…

El-P on His Cancer 4 Cure and American Dystopia

“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…

The Cult Evolves with Weapon of Choice

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…