Music

A patchwork of film and TV samples, scratches, and elegant baroque instrumentation on Hope & Sorrow follows French turntablist/producer Wax Tailor’s 2005 debut, which isn’t entirely different from this latest effort. Two years ago, Tailor employed looped keyboard melodies and cello flourishes on his breakout Tales of Forgotten Melodies LP,…

At some point in rock ‘n’ roll, creativity got confused with originality — bands and singers were suspect if their songs weren’t self-penned. Performers recording others’ songs were often seen as less “genuine” by the terminally hip. That kind of thinking is responsible for tons of rock albums containing two…

Compulsion is one of those albums that makes you scratch your head with wonder at how it could ever have gone out of print in the first place. Maybe we can blame the overabundance of jazz albums in the stratosphere, or maybe it’s because the late pianist Andrew Hill didn’t…

Airily pretty, vicariously depressing, and just plain emotionally exhausting, the Velvet Underground & Nico tune “Sunday Morning” nailed comedown bummer rock with such precision that most later efforts in that direction have been left wanting. Some 30-plus years later, the Baltimore duo Beach House has recovered and lethargically twirled this…

Nick Cave hasn’t played electric guitar for years and his primitive, grinding approach to the instrument inspired the name of the band and the thrashing, primal, punky noise it spits out on its debut album. With Bad Seeds Warren Ellis (violin, keyboards, bouzouki, guitar), Martyn Casey (bass), and Jim Sclavunos…

Perhaps only The New York Times could have written this headline: “Bluegrass That Can Twang and Be Cool Too.” Excuse me? Somebody inform the Gray Lady that all bluegrass is cool. Nickel Creek, the subject of the above header, is just different. The twang’s there, but forget everything you think…

Although the men of Air have never been the most explosive Frenchmen on the planet, there are times on the album Pocket Symphony where they feel more like air with a lowercase “a” than Air, the brains behind the sad yet swanky space-pop classic Moon Safari. The title itself is…

At a Gwen Stefani show, you are not a citizen of the world, but the subject of a commanding cultural empress whose red-lipped orders are your new desires. That is because Gwen Stefani publicly exists in and presents as her aesthetic a hugely successful, colorful and fun Gwen Nation. Not…

Of all forms of music, you’re most likely to catch two complementary bands on the same bill at a jamband show. In this case, San Francisco four-piece Tea Leaf Green and rural New Jersey sextet Railroad Earth both take the indelible influence of the Band in divergent directions that, when…

Wanna rave on without having to worry about whether the abandoned warehouse you’re dancing at is about to get busted by the cops? Then throw on your club-kid duds and head for Tumbleweed Park, 2250 South McQueen Road in Chandler, where Nightowl Entertainment will present the “100 percent legal” event…

Of course, we love the club life, but after so many weeks of hitting bar after bar, we needed a change of scenery. We found it on Friday, April 13, at Brand X Store, where local artists Disposable Hero, Family Soda, Mad One, and Fixer showcased their goods, spun some…