Music

You can’t listen to “Bizarre Love Triangle” or any of New Order’s other tech-pop oldies without marveling that a generation of teenagers thought such stuff conferred sophistication, compared to, say, George Michael. But having never matched the dark romance of their original incarnation as Joy Division, the quartet’s strummy bass…

In the 1980s, when Sunny Ade and other African stars surfaced, critics hoped their “world beat” blend of styles would lead to cultural respect and an international vision of pop music. It didn’t happened on the concert stage, but since the early ’90s, DJs and producers of club music have…

With the exception of Phil Spector, Jack Nitzsche was the greatest arranger, musician and producer of the early rock era. Unlike Spector, Nitzsche didn’t allow himself to get stuck in a musical rut. He kept producing vital work, including soundtrack scores for films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,…

There’s nothing like a dose of yesterday’s flavors to put today’s in perspective. Roughly representative of hard rock from a time when “grunge” didn’t require quotation marks, Local H’s Scott Lucas is not only from the mid-’90s, but of the mid-’90s, ahead of his time only in the minimal guitar-and-drums…

You wonder how being on a wimpozoid emo label like Jade Tree sits with these Tennessee-via-Portland hardcore erupters — and vice versa, where their PR department has to dispatch terms like “bad asses.” Knowing that these brunos could lay waste to the label’s entire striped-shirt roster with a few time…

Perhaps Gratitude vocalist/songwriter Jonah Matranga’s just sick of paying his dues. He fronted emo hopefuls Far throughout the ’90s (preceding the emo explosion by a decade, it’s worth noting) before doing the solo thing as onelinedrawing, a more stripped-down (and frankly better) indie vehicle. Both bands got this close to…

Life in Pictures has been making the trek from Prescott into Phoenix to play metal for a few years now. But beyond making a name in the local community, the band has caught the attention of Tim Lambesis, vocalist for the rising Christian metalcore band As I Lay Dying, who…

1. Mudvayne, Lost and Found (Sony) 2. Mindless Self Indulgence, You’ll Rebel to Anything (Metropolis) 3. Beck, Guero (Geffen) 4. Slipknot, Volume 3: (The Subliminal Verses) (Roadrunner) 5. Mars Volta, Frances the Mute (Universal) 6. The Killers, Hot Fuss (Island) 7. The Bravery, The Bravery (Island) 8. Jack Johnson, In…

Best I could tell from months of listening without a lyric sheet — thank you, Internet — this second disc from the kin of itinerant evangelist Leon Followill had something (okay, everything) to do with fuckin’. You could hear it in singer Caleb Followill’s delivery, the greasy whine of the…

If Ronnie Van Zant had replaced Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath sometime around 1974, the result probably would have sounded a lot like the latest disc from North Carolina’s Corrosion of Conformity. In the Arms of God is a fierce, impressive comeback effort from these guys, and after five years…

The B-52’s for the post-Simpsons era, the five members of Detroit’s Electric Six make dancing not only fun again, but funny. In the proud tradition of the band’s 2003 debut, Fire, there’s an emergency in progress on the new Señor Smoke, and the only solution is to dance as if…

Jason Molina is an itinerant artist, driven to challenge himself and change up his material and approach in search of new “moments.” Molina’s done things such as recruiting players unfamiliar with the songs and recording them as they discovered them, or decamping to an abandoned factory to get the perfect…

Leader of the indie rock band Cursive and his side project, The Good Life, Tim Kasher performs drunken, woebegone tales of relational dysfunction that have crowned him heir to Lou Barlow as the most emotionally besotted individual in indie rock. Like Barlow, Kasher shares unerring aim for the heart of…

You’ve probably never had the chance to party and dance the night away on the island electro-mecca of Ibiza, Spain, or shake it down at Club TLV in Tel Aviv, Israel, but this Saturday, April 23, you can pretend you’ve escaped the desert for more exotic climes when legendary tribal…

Hinson was raised a fundamentalist Christian, but by the time he was 19, he’d descended into his own private hell of addiction, jail and homelessness. During his downward spiral, he kept writing lyrics and composing tunes on borrowed instruments, and his dark odyssey is now brought to life with a…

Snakier and spookier than anything on the recent Trojan or Studio One compilations, Down Santic Way boasts incredible focus where the others offer breadth. There’s a reason for this: Where the former labels enjoyed a decades-long life span, Leonard Chin’s Santic Records hammered out its legacy within a concentrated period…

Call her the anti-Norah Jones. Crinkly-voiced, not particularly friendly, more issues than a thrift-store guitar — Martha Wainwright is a rare example of the darker folk-inspired singer-songwriter. And occasionally, she takes it too far, as when she molests a great song with the refrain “Ya bloody mother fuckin’ asshole.” Likewise,…

It’s nice to finally hear a local band living up to its hype. With Up, Ember Coast has proven it has what it takes to play with the nationals. The disc kicks off with the catchiest and most radio-friendly “On My Mark.” Vocalist Sean Brennan uses breath control to add…

Things to think about next time you toe-tap to “Seventh Son”: Johnny Rivers, whose last hit was “Swayin’ to the Music (Slow Dancin’)” in 1977, still continues packing fans into large halls, while his contemporaries slog away in pathetic oldies revues. A savvy businessman early on, he worked an integrity…