Music

It’s comforting to know that it’s always darkest before the dawn. Just when you think you’ve had your fill of all the ridiculous alt-country/roots-shtick outfits — the ones run by loser ex-punks whose options, like their tattoos, are slowly fading so they figure that by subbing twang for fuzztone and…

It’s not that White Pony is a bad album; it might even be a transitional album. Taken by itself, though, there’s just not much on it to distinguish Deftones from a host of other melodic metal bands, both above and below average. And that, especially from a band as inventive…

The first thing you notice talking to Chuck Prophet, naturally, is his voice. Not so much the way it sounds — a raspy, unfettered bark — but the attitude it projects. His is the tone of a polite cynic — filled with gallows humor, self-deprecation and a world-weary indifference. The…

Joseph Arthur is in the middle of a long series of phone interviews from the U.K., where he’s currently recording. Out of hundreds of variations on the same questions, what’s the one thing he doesn’t want to be asked? “Oh. Ahhhh . . . ‘How did Peter Gabriel get your…

When attacking the music business, one need not even break a sweat. After all, how hard is it to land a punch or a thousand upon a bloated carcass that can no longer move? In the not-so-distant future — maybe a decade from now, or a year from now, or…

Scaling cemetery walls and aching beneath dark skies in October rain. And brooding; always brooding. The odor of rotting fruit mingling with sod on moist ground. Celebratory funeral processions. Voices coming only in echoes, pale faces and eyes thick with coal-black eyeliner. Short days, long nights and inward journeys into…

So the New Times music editor calls up to inform me of a couple tribute bands playing at some horrible yuppie hellhole in Scottsdale. “Tributes” to Van Halen and Mötley Crüe called Atomic Punks and Shout at the Devil, respectively. Like I care. I hate tribute bands on principle. They…

Lord knows they must’ve had fun conceptualizing and executing the artwork for this CD. The fold-out booklet depicts various artifacts (a pistol and a switchblade, syringes, whiskey bottle, etc.) along with a raft of snapshots purportedly taken by a crime-scene examiner showing how each of the six Devils, plus one…

It’s somewhat comforting to know that the remains of the dead can fertilize new life. It’s a concept often found outside the realm of biology and one that can be seen in the genealogy of several of today’s most dynamic indie bands. An obvious example is the Cap’n Jazz dynasty;…

Standing on the stage of New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom, the old man looked broken, beaten down, a scream reduced to a whisper. It had been almost two years since he had last performed in public, after announcing in October 1997 that he was suffering from Shy-Drager Syndrome, a form of…

For the hundreds packed into Nita’s Hideaway on June 27, three hours seemed like a glitch, as time froze and the rest of the world just disappeared. The reason for this ethereal afterglow was the “surprise” appearance of internationally renowned DJ Shadow at Z-Trip’s weekly Funky Cornbread night. Shadow’s set,…

On a crowded bus in Buenos Aires, a gaggle of teenage girls huddle in the back, giggling and gossiping as teenage girls everywhere do. Their exuberant youth was too much for a cynic in his early 20s, who stood clutching a pole in the aisle. He couldn’t resist baiting the…

Members of the Liar’s Club sit and stare plaintively into their drinks. You’d think they were contemplating some recent run of emotional trauma and bad luck, the death of a loved one, the witnessing of a car crash. Or you’d guess, perhaps, that they are stoned. Couldn’t they say something?…

Back in the mid-’80s, when Athens, Georgia was the new Left Bank and all bands Southern were undergoing a great deal of public scrutiny, Drivin’ n’ Cryin’ was supposed to have been “The Next Big Thing.” It never happened, despite the support of friend Peter Buck and a string of…

We’ll dispense with the baseball shtick and just remind you that the band’s name cheekily refers to mediocrity below and barely up to the call of duty à la underachieving ’70s slugger Mario Mendoza. We’ll attempt to ditch the ready-made Yo La Tengo comparisons — although the sweetly seesawing guy-gal…

Common is one ambitious cat — and hip-hop sure as hell needs more of those. But on his previous album, 1997’s One Day It’ll All Make Sense, he was so driven to create a lyrical masterpiece that his music sometimes suffered by comparison. Praise be, then, for his latest, which…

Committed: Music From the Miramax Motion Picture (Chapter III) Ballad of Cable Hogue CD Single) Snapshot from the Lower Sonoran Desert: a steamy Saturday afternoon in July, hurtling across a dusty two-lane blacktop on the edge of Tucson as a local radio station broadcasts a special three-hour program titled Desert…

Music has always reflected the mechanical sounds of the era it’s made in. Roger McGuinn noted as much in the liner notes to the Byrds’ debut, using a lot of made up words like “rrrrrrrrooooaaaaahhhhh” and “krrrrrrriiiiiisssssshhhhhh” to illustrate his point. As annoying as that sounds, he was right. Early…

When Tucson musician Rainer Ptacek died at the age of 46 on November 12, 1997, he left behind more than a wife and kids and an international community of grieving friends and fans. Rainer — stricken by an abrupt seizure one February morning in 1996 while riding his bicycle to…

For Mickey Melchiondo and Aaron Freeman — known to their fans as Dean and Gene Ween, respectively — Ween’s new album, White Pepper, was a long time coming. The duo released a double live album, Paintin’ the Town Brown: Ween Live ’90-’98, last year, but it was a quickly assembled…