That which is too silly to be said is instead sung, claimed Voltaire, which may explain why Christopher Carrabba, the compact Floridian who leads Dashboard Confessional, is well on the way to achieving godlike status. A Mark, a Mission, a Brand, a Scar, Dashboard Confessional’s follow-up to that towering monument…
Believe it or not, the Exploited is nearing a quarter-century of cutting a crusty swath of anarchist destruction across the globe. Rest easy, though — with such ditties as “Fuck the System,” “Fuck the U.S.A.” and “You’re a Fucking Bastard” to their credit, one can pretty safely assume the corrosive…
Country singer Buddy Jewell isn’t on the cover of national music or entertainment magazines, nor is he being presented with the key to any city. Such are the perils of being an American Idol knockoff. Jewell, as five or six of you may recall, was named the next “Nashville Star”…
Most parents chart their child’s growth from notches on the wall. Diane and Chuck Simo can follow their son Jeff’s progress from the career memorabilia hanging in the family’s rec room. There’s his first guitar, a toddler-size Stratocaster called the Synsonics Junior Pro. Next, the folks show a photo of…
Atreyu is a band of young misfits and slackers from the suburbs of Orange County, California, that’s channeled its angst into developing an exciting style of hard-core punk. The kids are in the midst of what seems like a nonstop tour. Last week, that tour took a brief pit stop…
Daniel Lanois, superstar producer and occasional solo artist, took pains in his liner notes to thank all of the musicians who contributed to Shine, his first album in a decade. These fellow musicians include U2’s Bono, sensual country singer Emmylou Harris, prolific session drummer Brian Blade, longtime friend and collaborator…
Last month, New Times wrote about the Clubhouse, a rising venue in Tempe that promised to fill a niche once occupied by Nita’s Hideaway. Which is to say it was becoming a small but high-profile spot for local lovers of twangy rock and for an all-ages crowd that lives for…
Savvy businessmen familiar with the truism that more songwriting and production credits yield a more robust payday, the rainmaking Neptunes have done the entire album thing a couple of times. They’ve stretched their brittle candy-funk over the frames of Kelis’ Kaleidoscope and Clipse’s Lord Willin’ and juiced the live-band crackle…
A gold mine for Daniel Johnston fans and a great introduction for folks curious about the mentally troubled but gifted songwriter, The Early Recordings Volume 1 gives Johnston material previously only available via cassette or download a proper release. The double CD oozes Johnston’s odd universe, including pages of Daniel’s…
The Coral is a talented sextet of kids from Merseyside, England, whose improving songcraft and sense of self-expression threaten to eventually eclipse the kitsch and appreciation for pop history that earned them a cult following last year. The group’s 2002 self-titled debut was alternately ridiculous and fascinating. It blended an…
It’s difficult not to be struck by the similarity between Will Johnson and Guided by Voices’ Robert Pollard. Both deploy their tender and wounded but still hopeful baritones within the hushed buzz of lo-fi environs, wrapping their oblique lyrical imagery around melodic tunes that seep melancholia like athletes drip sweat…
In between rubber-stamping generous tax cuts and murky homeland security measures, Congress recently found time to christen 2003 the “Year of the Blues.” You may have missed it, but PBS’s programming wizards did not. They are marking the event with a lavish, upcoming documentary series that celebrates the musical idiom…
Once upon a time, Cher was cool. No, really. She was cool. Long before she became an iconic cottage industry, Cher was a hippie chick folk singer whose naughty songs upset radio programmers and whose eye makeup terrified uptight parents. A full decade before the ’70s schlock of “Gypsies, Tramps…
The only thing shocking about Johnny Rotten these days is the fact that the notoriously smarmy Sex Pistols singer sounds like a finger-wagging grandpa at times. But c’mon, how’s Rotten going to scandalize anymore, now that swearing at people while spouting inflamed rhetoric is the stuff of navy-suit network news?…
Steve Trella fields requests for songs by Southern bands like the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker Band and the Outlaws every day. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Trella is an afternoon DJ for KSLX-FM, Phoenix’s classic rock station. Lots of listeners grew up on the rebel-flag-waving attitude…
If the fourth annual edition of the Latin Alternative Music Conference (LAMC) had taken place in New York as it had before, chances are it would have been destroyed by the blackout that hit the Northeast. Things in sunny Los Angeles, however, proved to be just as much in need…
Warren Zevon’s almost-certain final album sums up his eclectic career to fine effect. If that doesn’t make it any sort of masterpiece, well, then that’s no problem. Masterpieces weren’t his thing even in the best of times, and they certainly aren’t his stock in trade as he suffers from terminal…
Either Detroit-based R&B dude Dwele likes old standbys, or he’s one lazy bastard. Subject — his major-label “debut” album — is a revamped version of his actual debut, a self-produced, self-distributed 1998 release, Rize. Having the older songs re-sequenced and spread out robs Subject of the erotic, stream-of-consciousness flow of…
With a career that reaches back four decades — and with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh long dead — Jimmy Cliff may be the closest thing to a visible elder statesman that reggae music has to offer. Perhaps explosive mainstream success has eluded Cliff, but that hasn’t prevented him from…
Like singing sisters Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer (who witnessed their alcoholic father kill their mother), singer-songwriter Jimmy Wayne is a walking country song — the messed-up Merle Haggard kind, that is. He saw his stepfather shoot his stepsister three times, leaving her paralyzed. His mother was imprisoned (for what,…
To butcher an oft-coined phrase, writing about punk is like slam-dancing about astrophysics; the latter remains a far more compelling way to spend your weekend. Particularly since the word “punk” means nothing anymore, or, worse yet, seems to mean everything. Lord help us, it’s a “vibe,” an “aesthetic” now. You…
Crank up this album, with its ripping, Motörhead-hearted opener “It’s Gonna Be a Long Night” closely followed by the band’s trippy dippy salute to “Zoloft,” with feel-good platitudes and soothing helicopter sounds whooshing from speaker to speaker, and people’ll ask, “What the hell is this?” Tell them it’s Ween, and…
