The Band Perry, Easton Corbin, & more Country Thunder 2014 4/11/14 Country music fans in Florence were surely pleased with the way their weekend kicked off last night. Friday marked day two of this year’s annual Country Thunder festival, and the night’s lineup featured up-and-comers Mary Hoffman and Cassadee Pope,…
Broken Bells Marquee Theater 4/10/2014 There’s a line from the LCD Soundsystem song “Drunk Girls” that resonated through Broken Bells’ show last night at the Marquee Theatre: “Drunk Girls know that love is an astronaut / It comes back but it’s never the same.” It was clear that the duo,…
Classic arcade games didn’t really have music. Unless it merited a spot on Buckner & Garcia’s Pac-Man Fever, the best a machine before the videogame crash of 1983 could hope for was two or three measures that would stick in your brain long after you’d committed every last beep to…
If it seems like everyone you know is hitting the pavement this weekend for some big festival, it’s only because that’s exactly what’s happening. There’s the first weekend of Coachella out in Cali, of course, as well as Country Thunder down in Florence and KUPD’s UFest over in the East…
Will Wiesenfeld, if nothing else, is a musician who is acutely aware of many things. Specifically, Wiesenfeld knows who he is: Focused on the concept ahead of him, he’s unyielding to anyone’s artistic input but a select few individuals, he has produced some of the most buzzed-about electronic pop records…
Those who follow the music charts across the pond were surprised when Bombay Bicycle Club’s fourth album, So Long, See You Tomorrow, debuted at the top. For purveyors of fine indie music, the band’s first No. 1 album didn’t seem like a shock at all. The young eclectic quartet, who…
Devour the Day might sound like a morbid name for a band; but that’s because the members were going through some pretty dark times. The group was born out of another band’s demise, and the uncertainty that followed. When American rock band Egypt Central disintegrated in 2012, bassist Joey Walser…
Country megastar Jason Aldean doesn’t front a tribute band insofar as we can tell. An argument could be made otherwise, considering the number of cover songs the crooner has performed and recorded during his storied career. Whether or not fans are aware of it, some of Aldean’s biggest hits were…
I Saw Sleigh Bells at Crescent Ballroom — Now I’m Forever Glittery
The five musicians of L.A.-based band Gemini Syndrome create such an electric reaction among themselves, it might be construed as too many primal forces colliding. However, it just happens to work out beautifully in their music. As their live set kicks off, the first thing you notice is guitarist Rich…
Rap music and country music — two distinctly different genres that don’t go together, right? Maybe in the past, cuz, but it seems like the hybridizing of the two are happening more and more in recent years. Brad Paisley and LL Cool J collaborated on last year’s track “Accidental Racist,”…
When the Mad Caddies take the stage on Sunday, April 13, at Club Red in Tempe, it will be the first time the ska-punk-reggae musicians have played for their Arizona fans in seven years. What can an audience expect after all this time? Well, the Mad Caddies performance they have…
If you’d told the brothers Kongos two years ago that their second album would still be going strong in 2014 and, in fact, gathering strength by the day with no end in sight, they would’ve called you “lunatic.” But it’s true. Lunatic, the Phoenix band’s sophomore effort, self-released in 2012…
Under normal circumstances, we’d wish local club promoter Robden Brethauer and the DJs of Obscura a hearty “Happy Birthday!” in honor of the monthly dance night’s sixth anniversary party this weekend. Since such glad tidings run contrary to the mopey and melodramatic sentiments inherent to the Britpop, post-punk, and ’80s…
Punk pioneer Jonathan Richman looked small on the stage at Crescent Ballroom last December with an acoustic guitar and his drummer, Tommy Larkins. The crowd shouted requests at him in hopes that he would play something by Richman’s seminal 1970s band the Modern Lovers. He appeased them by putting a…
For Adam Lovelady and Josh Rodriguez, who make up two-thirds of the electronic experimental outfit Mallevs — along with Jen Deveroux, known for producing dynamic special events — there is no grand or ultimate band goal. Instead, they get their excitement on the regular by making new music that they…
Thursday 10 AZ/88: Black Out Thursdays with Josh 1 (soulful house, lounge) Bobby Q’s: All Star Thursdays with DJ Freshmaker, DJ Phlava, DJ Dark Vader, & DJ Skoolboi (hip-hop, Top 40, reggae) Crescent Ballroom: Sunset Cruise Happy Hour with DJ Dana (various) Dos Gringos (Scottsdale): DJ Switch (rock, Top 40,…
The month of April is packed wall-to-wall with concerts. Check that, it’s packed wall-to-wall with great concerts. Some of the bigger hitmakers and tastemakers in pop and indie rock — Lorde, Bastille, Lana Del Ray, Grouplove, Phantogram, Chvrches … just to name a few — will all perform around the…
If you’d told the brothers Kongos two years ago that their second album would still be going strong in 2014 and, in fact, gathering strength by the day with no end in sight, they would’ve called you “lunatic.” But it’s true. Lunatic, the Phoenix band’s sophomore effort, self-released in 2012…
Country music is all about the storyline, and the path of least resistance, lyrically speaking, often makes for the best tales-turned-songs. Easton Corbin, the Floridian behind hits like “All Over The Road” and “A Little More Country Than That,” is a man familiar with this model, using it to his…
When it was announced in 2009 that James Mercer from The Shins and producer Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton were going to collaborate under the moniker Broken Bells, it seemed like another interesting experiment in a year glutton with odd collaborations (Monsters of Folk, anyone?)…
Craig Morgan, apart from stopping every other minute to either express gratitude or share a laugh, can call to mind the archetype of the male country star — years in the game, a rack of number one hits, a massive song in current rotation. Morgan doesn’t run by standards, though:…
