Just try to kick back with your favorite musical nonconformists: It ain’t no picnic. If Jello Biafra’s principled disdain for small talk doesn’t ruin it, then Jonathan Richman’s misplaced empathy for the comestibles will (“Lonely little coleslaw, ain’t got no friends . . .”). Meanwhile, Queens of the Stone Age…
You can’t fault Neil Young for trying. In his 1960s hit “Mr. Soul,” Young sang, “Is it strange I should change?” For anyone who’s followed the 58-year-old rocker’s career, the answer is an obvious “No!” In what may be his strangest career turn yet, Young is throwing to his audience…
My people smoke cigarettes, but they’re the brand of people I want to be around. More often than not, they’re not at all self-serious. They’re passionate about their lives, their environment, their friends, their recreation. In other words, smokers make great bar patrons. Now, I don’t smoke. I never have…
It’s a testament to the natural-born, arena-bred talents of Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn that no matter how many well-worn formal elements, humdrum lyrical bromides or suspect views on gender roles the pair pepper their popular brand of country music with, they nearly always end up producing some of Nashville’s…
While Adam Green’s counterpart in the très cool Moldy Peaches, Kimya Dawson, has taken a more serious route in her solo career, singing songs about anthrax and globalization, Green has retained the peachy playfulness on his second solo outing, Friends of Mine. And the “anti-folk” singer’s whimsy leads to the…
Read the other day that Macy Gray’s Id — the album, though what she sells is what she thinks — didn’t move because of its being released before the smoke cleared post-September 11; sorry, didn’t buy it (the excuse, not the disc, though come to think of it . …
Retrospective musical obsessions are a dicey proposition. When it comes to the decade between 1959 and 1969, Holly Golightly is undoubtedly obsessed. She has made a career as such — the prima donna protégée of Billy Childish who wears an adoration of rock ‘n’ roll’s formative years on her sleeve…
Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traveled 6,000 miles, braving starvation, frostbite and treacherous landscape to cross the continental divide on their way to the Pacific Ocean and back. In the minds of the modern indie-rock enthusiast, however, that’s nothing compared to the difficulty a darling of the genre faces…
The man formerly known as Daniel Dumile understands that today’s heroes come a dime a dozen, doused in bravado, drunk on morality, and that it’s all too easy to be cast as one. Wave a flag and a gun, fight the odds, grab the loot, perish spectacularly, or all of…
The local punk crowd erupted out of left field last week. Literally. The Vans Warped Tour, which since the late 1990s has become the U.S.’s prime traveling summer punk and ska showcase, routinely attracting stars of the genres (Rancid, Less Than Jake) as well as the artists pushing the noise…
That the Drive-By Truckers would be compared so widely to Lynyrd Skynyrd now is obvious. The band, fronted by Alabama expatriates Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, burst into critical consciousness two years ago with their Southern Rock Opera, a sprawling two-CD concept record that translated the Skynyrd tragedy into rumination…
Now that emo has proven itself capable of selling more records than can fit into the back of a van, major labels are stumbling over one another to sign up as many young acts as they can, gambling that a small but loyal audience in New Brunswick or Santa Cruz…
Rick James had the Mary Jane Girls. Prince had Vanity 6. But if Luther Campbell put together a girl group, it might sound like Brooklyn’s booty bass lovin’ Fannypack. Chances are you’ve already heard their saucy ode to the female frontal wedgie, “Cameltoe” (“Fix yourself girl/You got a cameltoe!”), a…
With 1999’s Revés/Yosoy, Cafe Tacuba (by far the finest Mexican rock group) got away with literal murder. The risky double album didn’t sell worth a shit, but it deservedly won a Latin Grammy and was at the top of the major Latin rock critics’ year-end lists. In that light, Cuatro…
Indie rock’s next great hype monstrosity has arrived in the unassuming person of You Forgot It in People, the greatest record ever made by an overly intellectual 10-member Canadian pop collective. It’s a fine complement to People’s noisy, ethereal pop tunes — coherent and sweet enough for one-man-with-a-guitar open-mike readings,…
Robert Lockwood Jr. is a remarkable American story. Nurtured and taught by seminal bluesman Robert Johnson, who lived with Lockwood’s mother in the last years of his life, the 88-year-old Lockwood is one of the last living practitioners of the Delta blues the way it was conceived. “I’ve got two…
For a few weeks this past spring, the Dixie Chicks were the United States’ public enemy No. 1. (Well, numbers 1 through 3, anyway.) To country music fans — and to diehard patriots — the Chicks had the unmitigated gall to tell a British audience in March that they were…
Sorry — there won’t be any Missy Elliott or Snoop Dogg on this stop of the self-proclaimed “first true annual hip-hop festival.” Except for Fabolous, a rather anonymous platinum seller, each of these acts offers the best and most lucrative that rap has to offer in the 0-3. Channeling Shaggy…
For most Arizona bands, the arc they can expect their careers to take is not unlike that of the Sciannas. Take a bunch of transplanted musicians, in this case Connecticut-bred brothers Fran and Dan Scianna, and thrust them into a mystifying music scene where it takes months, even years, to…
By now, it seems, there is no story about Fleetwood Mac left to tell. No snort has gone undocumented, no betrayal unchecked. They sold millions of albums to people who knew the soap opera and wanted the soundtrack; they sold tons of concert tickets to those who needed to witness…
Phish launched the second set of its summer tour opener at the Cricket Pavilion in Phoenix July 7 with the agile rocker “Birds of a Feather.” The twentysomethings in the aisles looked thrilled, twirling and bouncing along to the song’s opening chords. And, just like the old days, someone next…
Whenever a critics’ favorite puts out a new album, you can expect a sizable rush to praise. The new one from Fountains of Wayne, Welcome Interstate Managers, is no exception. During the four years since their last release, fans of songwriting team Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood’s arch, classic-rock-referenced punk…
