Following up last year’s New Times Soundcheck, a two-day festival at Club Red in Tempe — which featured performances by The Love Me Nots, Sugar Thieves, 2 Tone Lizard Kings, Jason Devore, The Insects, Crusher Sound System, and more — was a serious task. But challenges are cool, right? Up…
Thom Yorke of Radiohead isn’t into doing interviews. He prefers to be the shadowed cock-eyed intellect behind the Radiohead machine or to spout spastic lines and moan over the twitchy glitch-pop of his Atoms for Peace project. He doesn’t have much time for promotional rigmarole. But Yorke has kids, and…
Fadil El Ghoul — better known to dance floor princes and princesses as R3hab — is relatively new to the EDM game, breaking out in 2008, right as the genre began to experience a seismic shift in popularity. A proponent of “Dutch house” style, there’s a distinct menace to R3hab’s…
Can you imagine how you would have turned out if The Flaming Lips — the same Christmas on Mars/crazy/insane Flaming Lips you’re thinking of — had appeared on Sesame Street? It’s a question we’ll soon be able to answer. The Lips have appeared on Yo Gabba Gabba!, arguably the hippest…
Nathan Willett of Cold War Kids says that when it came time to make the band’s new record, the forthcoming Dear Miss Lonely Hearts (due April 2), they decided to play less to what the band “should be” and more to what it “could be.” “I feel like we started…
Singer Stan Devereaux has been playing R&B and soul in Arizona since the 1960s, growing up in Tucson before exploring the Phoenix soul scene after college, then departing for Europe, South America, and Georgia. His journey led him back to Phoenix, and since he’s settled into a groove here in…
decker. @ Sail Inn|3/1/13Sedona-based songwriter Brandon Decker bounced around the Sail Inn like a pinball, shaking hands, raising drinks, and grooving intently to the lineup of bands dueling between two stages. Decker’s a humble enough guy, but it was impossible to deny: Last night was his night. The broad smile…
I’m no prophet, but 2013 might go down in the books as some sort of “shoegaze revival banner” year. Not only did My Bloody Valentine release the long-awaited (22 years) MBV, the followup to the genre-defining Loveless, but yesterday news broke that the Southwest’s long-dormant dreampop/shoegaze/noise rock showcase, Beautiful Noise,…
In 1983, an unknown songwriter named Edwin Bankston decided that if no labels were interested in putting out his record — a nine-song country-boogie album called Over There…and Over Here, credited to “The Red Rippers” — he was going to put it out himself. Featuring stream-of-consciousness lyrics, psychedelic lead guitar,…
Somewhere between Dwight Yoakam’s honky-tonking cover of Cheap Trick’s “I Want You to Want Me” and Terry Manning’s power-pop take on “Guess Things Happen That Way,” the Jack Clement-penned single made famous by Johnny Cash, lies Reckless Kelly’s “She Likes Money, He Likes Love.” The standout track from the Austin-via-Bend,…
The times I’ve chatted with Maynard James Keenan, he’s always seemed calm, collected, and to-the-point. He’s a businessman, a vitner, and he’s real busy. Then, just when I’ve imagined him as a normal dude (a fan of Justified, The Walking Dead, and Fringe, by the way) he reminds me that…
Each spring, right before it gets just ridiculous hot in the Valley, local modern rock station KUPD hosts UFest, a gigantic rock/nu-metal/modern rock outdoor festival. Past lineups have featured Three Days Grace, Helmet, Godsmack, and more, setting the bar high for fans of crunchy, shouty rock. Well, the station has…
It’s been a hot minute since Portland-based indie rock stalwarts Modest Mouse put a record out (the band’s latest EP, No One’s First and You’re Next came out in freaking 2009). Songwriter Isaac Brock insists new material is coming (but you know, he named his record label Glacial Pace), but…
Phoenix New Times and KUKQ have partnered to resurrect a Phoenix festival tradition, That Damn Show. On Saturday, April 20, at Mesa Ampitheatre, Bad Religion, AWOLNATION, Against Me! (Editor’s Note: After this blog was published, Against Me! canceled its upcoming performance at That Damn Show), The Faint, Face to Face,…
When Swedish hard rock Norrsken disbanded in 2000, its principles both embarked on their own doom rock journeys: Guitarist Magnus Pelander formed Witchcraft, while vocalist Joakim Nilsson formed Graveyard. Both outfits maintained Norrsken’s dedication to Sabbath-indebted doom metal, but as time has gone on, both bands — especially Graveyard –…
In this week’s issue, we speak with guitarist Sir Richard Bishop, whose path from Phoenix and his days in the Sun City Girls has found him at the forefront of guitar experimentation from his home base in Seattle and around the world. Deftly blending and/or shifting between Middle Eastern ragas,…
Sir Richard Bishop met John Fahey only once, despite the fact that Fahey’s Revenant Records — the blues, jazz, and folk label founded by the guitarist/independent label pioneer — released Bishop’s proper solo debut, Salvador Kali, in 1998. “[It was] shortly after the record came out,” Bishop says. “He was…
Twenty-three-year-old songwriter Winston Yellen didn’t attempt to “pull a Bon Iver” when he rented a pre-Civil War home — formerly occupied by Johnny Cash and June Carter — in the woods outside Nashville and recorded his debut LP, Country Sleep. It just sort of happened. “I wasn’t really conscious of…
Atención, long-lost singer/songwriter types: If you’re looking to make a big comeback, having a mythical backstory, two stone-cold classic LPs in the can, and a blockbuster documentary goes a long way. Such is the case with Sixto Rodriguez, whose rise from dusty-fingered crate digger obscurity to a star has been…
Local low-power alternative station KWSS has announced that it’s moving to a new home on the FM dial, shifting from 106.7 to 93.9 on Sunday, March 10. Home to shows like TMI (which I call into once a week to discuss music news and play selections), Mostly Vinyl with Johnny…
When writing about Things As They Are, the debut LP by Tucson psychedelic outfit Saint Maybe, for my 10 Best Things I Heard in 2012 column, I noted the album’s sprawling, wide-open desert quality: “[It] sounds like the space between Phoenix and the Old Pueblo. It feels like a late-night…
UPDATE: The band also took home the award for “Best New Artist.” So maybe LL Cool J’s joke about “always getting back together” following Taylor Swift’s performance of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” fell a little flat, and maybe the Gotye win for Best Alternative felt a little…
