Music

Most bands would kill for the fan base and rep of a band like Tool. How does Tool do it? Probably not like you’d imagine. While most bands release new material and tour annually, Tool has released only three LPs in 16 years, with its fourth album (and first in…

It’s a close race at breakneck speed, but Wolfmother’s escalation in popularity appears to be outpacing the growth of the trio’s wild, untamed Afros by just a hair. Since the band’s self-titled debut full-length only came out this week, it would be easy to mistake kudos for the Sydney, Australia,…

Search Google with the phrase “ska sucks” and you’ll encounter various vitriolic ventings about how the musical style blows. It’s not a surprise, really, as ska has long been considered the whipping boy among musical misanthropes, who unilaterally deride its seemingly repetitive nature and upbeat spirit, or how bands like…

Few people — if any — can claim as much influence on the recent crop of dance-rock and new Brit invasion bands as Paul Epworth, the man who’s produced and/or remixed music by Bloc Party, The Rapture, Babyshambles, The Streets, The Rakes, The Futureheads, and others. Epworth, a.k.a. Phones (when…

Goatwhore really gets around. Based in New Orleans, where all devilishly good-and-evil music comes from, the four-piece death-metal group boasts guitarist Sammy Duet (of the now-defunct Acid Bath) and lead growler Ben Falgoust (who moonlights with Soilent Green). Rounded out by drummer Zach Simmons — who replaced Zak Nolan –…

1. Taking Back Sunday, Louder Now (Warner Bros./Wea) 2. The Streets, The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living (Wea/679) 3. Coup, Pick a Bigger Weapon (Epitaph/Ada) 4. Lewis Black, Carnegie Hall Performance (Comedy Central) 5. Dresden Dolls, Yes, Virginia . . . (Roadrunner Records) 6. Secret Machines, Ten Silver…

Panama is a bridge, a tenuous handshake between the two Americas whose strange geography undermines neither its singular identity nor its peculiar power. Panama! is also a bridge, permitting ease of movement between disparate musical styles. The lengthy subtitle is no joke — any one song on this compilation is…

John Butler Trio regularly sells out venues with multi-thousand-person capacities in Europe, Asia, and Butler’s native Australia, but the U.S. is proving a harder nut to metaphorically crack. There’s an irony to that, since so much of the group’s success is based on the world’s fascination with roots rockers like…

I’d love to say that I have a huge grudge against Marshall Beck and his heavy metal band, Rebirth. That would make this rant a lot more straightforward, because then I would just pinch him out of the air with my chopsticks, like an annoying fly. But the thing is,…

Relationship drama doesn’t always have to play out to a complicated, overproduced soundtrack. In the case of Phoenix quartet Huskies’ debut EP, the good fight, straightforward instrumentation only intensifies the soul-baring. Front woman Natalie Espinosa sings about love, betrayal, regret and longing in a low, velvety voice, accompanied by upbeat…

Spending time with the Starlight Mints’ latest release, Drowaton, is like wandering through a carnival fun house, bouncing down rippling hallways past mind-bending mirrors to the bipolar accompaniment of lusty keyboard swirls, dagger-wielding lyrics, and sighed choruses. The foursome has been mutating conceptual pop since the ’90s, and Drowaton is…

Mike Skinner’s cockney argot and squirrelly cynicism always play well stateside — even if the U.S. audience consists of more hipsters than hip-hop heads — but back in the land of boiled meat he’s huge. Maybe that’s the problem. The woes of superstardom dominate Skinner’s third release, finding the once-affable…

Toby Keith may not really be a dick, but he plays one on CD. He generally comes across as ultra-smug, as if flaunting his popularity in the faces of intellectual elitists was half the fun of success. Yet the attitudinal aggressiveness that dominates White Trash is vastly preferable to the…

Although L.A. boy-girl duo Giant Drag say on their MySpace page that they sound like “crap,” you can rest assured that, in actuality, they don’t. Singer/guitarist Annie Hardy and drummer-synth player Micah Calabrese create brutally honest, clever little numbers with titles like “You’re Full of Shit (Check Out My Sweet…

For a band based in Baltimore, Wilderness sure is in touch with its British side. The band’s just-released Vessel States and self-titled debut — which garnered the quartet considerable acclaim from Pitchfork and its readers last year — draw as heavily from the other side of the pond as they…

In reviewing last year’s The Devil’s Rejects — the incredibly twisted gore flick written and directed by horror/metal renaissance man Rob Zombie — critic Roger Ebert ended his piece thusly: “I don’t want to get any e-mail messages from readers complaining that I gave the movie three stars, and so…

A show combining two of the most talented female singers in contemporary indie rock is like an oasis in a musical desert devoid of the second sex. Brooklyn trio Rainer Maria, fresh from the release of a new album, Catastrophe Keeps Us Together, combines slow, atmospheric instrumentals with singer Caithlin…

It’s been two and a half decades since Cocteau Twins concocted the formula, but there’s still something thrilling about a moody chanteuse backed by soaring, symphonic ambiance. Headlights is the newest avatar of the form — and while its sound soars and sighs with the best of them, the trio…