I read The Catcher in the Rye about seven times before I realized that it depicted Holden Caulfield’s spiral into depression. Initially, I thought he was just a caustically sarcastic son of a bitch with a love for alcohol. When my 10th-grade English teacher pointed out that Holden was telling…
There’s cheeky and then there’s just don’t give a… Boston rapper Benzino, co-owner of hip-hop magazine The Source, is the latter. Despite controversy over his editorial policies former Source staffers have frequently complained of pressure from the boss to give his albums positive reviews the rapper includes a coupon for…
Well, well, Weller another album hailed as “comeback” in the U.K., where it’s been available in altered form since September, and another album sure to be labeled “sell back” in the U.S. You can’t damn the man for growing up and out of his angry phase; that’s what men do…
Lo-fi indie pop gets a startling makeover in the able hands of Phil Elvrum, the young Washington state producer/musician who fronts the loose aggregate of crunchy creative types known as the Microphones. Over a series of albums and singles he’s made for the venerable Olympia label K, Elvrum has methodically…
Elvis Costello’s wit and word play have long established him as a preeminent lyricist, but surprisingly no one’s attempted to assemble a credible tribute to arguably the greatest songwriter of the last quarter-century until now, leaving his oeuvre mostly as untouched as King Tut’s tomb. With Almost You, the new…
Okay, here’s what George Strait has done: Without scandal or undue hype, without compromising quality or any capitulation to fashion, Strait has adhered to his name. The veteran superstar, who releases his first career live CD For the Last Time Live at the Astrodome on February 11, has managed to…
Down in the nether regions of southern Arizona, where the Santa Cruz River nourishes the land and the grass grows waist high, lies the San Rafael Ranch, now a state park, where Tucson-based country troubadour Andy Hersey worked as a real-life cowboy and shoed horses just over a decade ago…
DJ Mark Farina can’t talk too long. He has to go pick up his soundboard. “It’s been in the shop for two or three weeks,” says Farina, one of San Francisco’s top electronic artists. “It needed all this rewiring or something. I’ve had it for a few years and it’s…
The Grammys must not much like Arizona. The nominations for the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences’ (NARAS) 45th annual musical awards shindig were announced last week, and the nominations revealed that the academy still struggles with its own relevance. A stated commitment to open-mindedness made by former NARAS…
“Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough,” said the John Huston character in Chinatown. In music, the same time-plus-trash formula often leads to the next big thing. Which brings us to the Coral, a six-piece Scouse combo, all in their late teens and very…
One Bedroom starts out perky — almost too perky. Like that little dog, Chester, who constantly kissed up to Spike in the Tom ‘n’ Jerry cartoons, “Four Corners” opens up the record with an insistent hook; a chiming tug on your sleeve that says, “C’mon, guys! If you forgive us…
Devendra Banhart’s debut is a mixture of song fragments, whistles, handclaps, chants, and some of the most oddly affecting, full-blown songs you may hear all year. Recorded on four-track and occasionally on ye olde answering machine the music rolls out slowly and sometimes abrasively, jarring listeners with high-pitched vocals and…
Red-headed Lena Katina and brown-haired Julia Volkova are t.A.T.u., two Russian teenagers who may or may not be lesbians involved in a steamy underage relationship; 200 km/h in the Wrong Lane, their English-language debut, is scorched-earth teen-exploitation pop nearly as good as “My Boyfriend’s Back” and “Leader of the Pack.”…
The New York-based dance label Ultra excels at neat summations of current electronic-music fads: Its recent electroclash compilation pitted young nü-wavers like Chicks on Speed and Fischerspooner against their stalwart ’80s antecedents, and its new trance set, though by definition creatively atrophied, condenses all the big-room exhilaration that scene has…
Evidently, a healthy single and a few well-placed guest turns are enough to spark a full tour these days. Erykah Badu, whose late 2000 album Mama’s Gun is a brilliant old-school soul turn but by now is very, very outdated, is coming to Club Rio in Tempe, ostensibly on the…
A person can’t be too careful when it comes to calling another person by his right name, especially when he has several. Hank Williams III was born Shelton, which is what his good friend and fellow country singing rebel Wayne “the Train” Hancock calls him. Others call him “Hank 3,”…
When Brent Best laughs, it sounds like the slide racking on a shotgun. Sounds that way when he coughs, too. Sometimes when he sings. It’s a little worse than usual; he and his band, Slobberbone, toured Europe for a few weeks and just returned home. Road life means late nights…
Halfway through a party thrown by Waylon Jennings’ family at the Rhythm Room in Phoenix last week, I swear the old man’s honky-tonk spirit appeared. Jessi Colter, Jennings’ widow, sat at a white piano. She played Elvis Presley’s achy-breaky blues number “One Night.” “One night with you/Is what I’m praying…
Nas runs, it seems, on two themes loss and the reclamation of former glory. With God’s Son, the Queens rapper plagued by a lack of focus for years makes those themes indistinguishable, finally meeting the challenge of Illmatic, his 1994 masterpiece and albatross as he struggled through mediocrity. Conceptually, the…
So I was in Tower Records the other day, and I saw that System of a Down has a new CD out called Steal This Album!. Since its last one was kind of a letdown, certainly not worth the full $17 list price, I figured, “What the fuck? I’ll crotch…
If nothing else, DJ Quik is responsible for “Safe + Sound,” the greatest, most emblematic gangsta-rap chorus of all time: “Some believe in Jesus/And some believe in Allah/But niggas like me/Believe in makin’ dollaz.” But if you think that’s all he has to say, the rest of this collection compiled…
Damn if Big Silver’s unassuming pub rock doesn’t sneak into your bloodstream and strengthen with each listen, until your head is swimming. And it’s not just the Arkansas quintet’s musical subtlety that makes it seem like an undercover operation: In Bizarro World, their hidden gem of a self-titled 2001 debut…
