The power-pop quartet Weezer has inspired a new generation of unassuming, garage-dwelling would-be rock stars. In fact, members of young Valley rock bands — we’re talking the 16- to 23-year-olds here — regularly cite the band and its giddy, sincere songwriting as primary influences. “They’re just cult icons. They came…
The Crystal Method has been cranking out goat-slaying electronic breaks since 1994. Like Underworld, the Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim and a handful of other electronic musicians, partners Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland have a signature sound that will have you shaking your ass whether you hear it at a rave,…
No big shock here — Christmas music is about as played out as Tickle Me Elmo. It’s the unavoidable scourge of the season — oh come all ye faithful, because we’ve got you by the boot strings and you can’t escape. Holiday music is piped in through nearly every working…
Billy Bragg’s slashing stridency and plain old passion seem like an ideal pill for fearful and politically frustrating times such as these. In the early 1980s, with his lonely Stratocaster and sometimes guileless Cockney wobble, the British neo-folkie transcended his acute Anglocentrism with anger, melancholy and whimsy, all as literate…
Death metal is a victim of its own PR. Nearly every band touts itself as the most brutal, the most devastating, the most over-the-top thing to come down the pike since the Spanish Inquisition. A certain amount of preaching to an already extant choir is understandable, of course, but there’s…
To the modern ear, “boogie-woogie” sounds pretty stupid. You can trace the origin of the term back a century, to the days when the meaning of the term depended on where you said it. In pockets of black culture, it could mean a racy dance, an act of adultery, or…
Hoist up the Jack Daniel’s, unearth the buttless chaps and red bandanna and stay home and watch these DVDs, dude! Can’t wear that shit outside. It’s not 1988 anymore. But, back in the day, during glam metal’s glory years, the world was safe for aspiring rock ‘n’ roll queenies. Notable…
For a band like Denver’s DeVotchKa, whose enigmatic sound is rarely articulated fairly in print, live gigs offer a chance to provide at least an intimation to virgin audiences. Yet by the time DeVotchKa’s surging assault of Slavic and Spanish styles — via cello, trumpet, violin, accordion and raging guitar…
For the rest of us, language flows on a nonlinear yet generally straightforward neural pathway before it reaches our tongues, picking up a few personal significances and even trace bits of wit — if we’re lucky. Every so often, though, a few people receive Valis-like transmissions from somewhere, which act…
When he’s onstage, James Hall looks as if he’s experiencing exorcism via electrocution. The singer and gifted iconoclast is on fire, with ants in his pants and a heavy dose of James Brown in his shiny shoes. Occasionally, the executioner turns down the juice, and Hall stands still long enough…
Texas music history swarms with stories of Texans who went to Nashville dreaming of fame and fortune. The most celebrated stories hinge on spectacular failure, which is followed by a return to Texas, and after regrouping back on home turf, eventual triumph. The most famous of these tales is that…
As a friend said while we were driving through New Orleans’ French Quarter listening to the rock critic Tom Moon calmly declare on NPR that numero-uno Southern soul man Al Green’s new album I Can’t Stop is an improvement over his early-’70s classics: “Motherfucker, you did stop!” Certainly, he did…
Numerous long shadows fall across Choronzon: Metallica circa Master of Puppets, Opeth’s Blackwater Park, the Current 93 school of drawing-room satanism. This could bode well — or poorly. It all depends on who’s working with the source material. Akercocke, four Anglo-Saxon agents of Satan who have the good sense to…
In case you haven’t heard, this is Madlib’s year. Actually, come to think about it, you probably haven’t. Stones Throw Records’ workaholic beat man has got more hustles going this year than Timbaland and the Neptunes combined. He released the Blue Note Records remix compilation, Shades of Blue: Madlib Invades…
There’s death in the undergrowth, black and loamy. It crouches beneath broad green leaves like puddles of shadow, insulating the banks of the Cumberland and the Monongahela with the muffled hush of decay. The Appalachians ache with it. So does Jolie Holland. Holland is a restless Bay Area songwriter and…
Criticism and Korn have always gone hand in hand, and the group has been subjected to some of the most venomous barbs ever fired at a successful rock band. Some of them center on an endorsement deal with Puma. Other wags malign occasional A&R man Jonathan Davis for inflicting Orgy…
Among the world’s richest gutter punks, Rancid rose from the streets, the alleyways and the septic tanks to sing with authenticity about fistfights in cemeteries and the dead-broke, NyQuil-chuggin’ lifestyle. After they had a mid-’90s hit with “Salvation,” a song about collecting junk in wealthy neighborhoods for the Salvation Army,…
Just as sure as you’ve never heard anyone profess, “I love waiting in a doctor’s office because the magazines are topnotch,” you’ll never hear anybody bragging about the riveting experience of recording an album. After the excitement of who the producer will be and what gear you’ll be using wears…
Much like their ambitious funk workouts that can extend into the wee hours of the morning, the members of Particle take a stream-of-consciousness approach to communicating about their music. “I’m looking for the word. I’m trying to find it in my mind,” says Particle drummer Darren Pujalet by phone from…
Yours truly hasn’t taken a day off since suffering the after-effects of Scottsdale’s 1995 Raw Pork Festival, which means he’s accrued enough vacation days to stay home studying Baywatch reruns until he’s post-menopausal. Maybe it’s time for a trip somewhere farther than Discount Cheeses. No can do, unfortunately. Who would…
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…
