Music

Anyone with a dog-eared copy of the Flying Burrito Brothers’ debut The Gilded Palace of Sin knows the concept of old-school R&B played by a traditional country-and-western band is nothing new. But Tucson’s Hacienda Brothers don’t have to wage an awareness campaign for country-rock like the Burritos did, leaving them…

Over the course of a 30-year career, Joni Mitchell went from being a distinctive folk singer to a pompous artiste drowning in highfalutin orchestral arrangements. Whether Mitchell was her model or not, Joanna Newsom seems to have followed the same ill-advised path, but in only two years. Returning after her…

Pete Townshend’s clearly playing to the school of thought that says Who’s Next is better than The Who Sell Out here. And it goes beyond the way he “re-investigates” the oscillating synth riff of “Baba O’Riley” in the first few seconds of The Who’s first album in 24 years. This…

While purists continue splitting hairs over “true” heavy-metal style, Danava combs the genre into a weave of fantastic art-rock wizardry that leaves the shtick straight by the wayside. For its full-length debut, Kemado Records’ dark horse moves between kohl-cloaked glam and by-the-misty-bog Zeppelin hallucination fantasies; gargantuan stoner rhythms and high…

At 75, Ike Turner is still one mean motherfucker. Risin’ With the Blues, his first release of new material in three years, is as tough and weathered as the man himself, full of searing guitar work and his ever-prevalent tough-guy persona. Mixing half a dozen quality originals (including the signature…

Tucson may seem like an unlikely home for a French man who plays jazzy, eclectic pop-folk, but Parisian transplant Naim Amor is a man of many flavors. While his own melancholy music is filled with dreamy, soft instrumentation and his smoky-voiced accent, he considers everyone from the Sex Pistols to…

Roots-rockers the Damnwells may have had their first taste of major-label compromise when Epic Records blanked out the title to their debut’s 41-second leadoff track, “Assholes.” Come on, Epic — is that really still a bad word? Anyway, the band reprised the song in full, fleshed-out glory for last year’s…

Don’t let those could-be-Finnish song titles fool you. Anathallo hails from Michigan, its name draws reference from a Japanese folktale, and its debut, Floating World, bears little resemblance to any of the zillion CD-Rs recorded in recent years by Avarus or Avarus-associated concerns. This five-years-running septet fuses the reeling, jet-stream…

Damn, Diosa’s sure got some mad DJ skills. The punky female turntablist, who got into the scratching-and-spinning biz after witnessing a “life-altering” performance by Z-Trip in 2000, is not only a member of such she-jay collectives as Females Wit Funk, but she’s also been featured in the pages of Sonik…

If Las Vegas can have its homegrown Britpop, why not Tucson? The Killers acclimated us to Yanks and synths again, but The Year of Acceleration is here to say, “What about surliness and passionate songs about the sun never shining and prescription medicine, then?” This is no ironic re-creation of…

The last time you encountered Native American music, you were probably in the middle of a deep-tissue massage. Long Winter Nights, on the other hand, should be blazing over the PA at a bustling pub. This is round dance music — raw, joyous drum and chant, far from the sedative…