Music

G. Love’s voice rides a rollercoaster of melodies — up, down, and around hairpin turns with a crafty grace that owes as much to old-school hip-hop as it does to classic R&B. While Love (born Garrett Dutton) gets top billing, his music’s most distinctive element is his backing band’s shuffling,…

Baby Dee became a legend in New York’s art music underground for her antics with the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus and her penchant for roaming the city on a gigantic tricycle, smoking a cigar and wearing a bee costume. Onstage, and on her recent Safe Inside the Day CD, Dee’s shamanistic…

Normally, we avoid pimping our company’s shit in this column (so as to avoid becoming soulless corporate shills and all), but we figured y’all would let us slide on plugging our annual Ultra DJ Spin Off on Friday, February 15, at Myst, 7340 East Shoeman Lane in Scottsdale. A half-dozen…

Released in 2005, this was the second compilation (of three, so far) designed to showcase the artists on Ludacris’ DTP label. Of the 17 tracks here, Luda appears on eight — three are solo tracks (if you count “Intro”), and the rest are group efforts like “That’s My Shit,” with…

Some of the hottest parties hit this place during Super Bowl weekend, so by the time Sunday rolled around, we had a mean case of social anxiety disorder. We figured all the other photographers in town would snap their fair share of glitz and glamour shots over the weekend, so…

With all the disparate influences Sonorous has in its lexis, the percentages of what you’re going to get (and when) are always in flux, and this clashing of expectations constitutes the best moments on the group’s second CD, recorded “live” to tape during two successive nights at the Lost Leaf…

British singer Dusty Springfield was the diva de tutti dive of the “Tough and Tender” genre, in the sense that no matter how sweet the pop confection, she was guarded in all directions but one — the only place she allowed some vulnerability to show was straight down the pipes…

Though he might not be a household name, this Brooklyn-based musician’s had a fruitful career as a sideman for jazz and pop artists (including Norah Jones) and as a songwriter. On what is only his second solo release, he showcases new material that follows up on his 2002 debut, Come…

The two-minute take on “New York, New York” that opens Cat Power’s second album of covers is almost too easy. Iconic to a fault and not too engaging musically, it’s mostly a warm-up for Chan Marshall and her newly minted Dirty Delta Blues Band. The group succeeds The Greatest’s Memphis…

Fans of this Philadelphia six-piece will undoubtedly hail Angels of Destruction! as its best album; it’s certainly Marah’s most accessible and expansive record to date. There’s always been an honest theatricality and a colorful, imaginative flair running through Marah’s musical stories, but Angels takes them to a new level entirely…

Though they’re still waiting to make a big splash in America, The Editors have been making waves in the U.K., earning them the headlining spot in this traveling circus of a tour. The British post-punk band follows in the steps of international rock sensations like Franz Ferdinand and Interpol but…

No tough goth punk worth his or her high-heeled steel-toed boots would let a broken collarbone get in the way of making great glam trash music. Not only did Wednesday 13, former vocalist/guitarist of Murderdolls and Frankenstein Drag Queens From Planet 13, continue performing after a devastating car crash last…

While this Oakland quartet owes a substantial debt to Cali peers Green Day and blink-182, they’ve always demonstrated promiscuous tastes. Their second album, 2006’s Decomposer, employs nine different producers in forging its eclectic sound. Influences vary widely, from electro-industrial to baroque pop to glam metal and ’80s New Wave, all…

Last year, local hip-hop duo The Premiere self-released a phenomenal album, London Paris New York — an audio opus packed with instrumentation from garage-rock guitar solos to New Wave synths, all layered over beds of bouncing beats and clever raps (“Patrick Swayze” still gets our vote for catchiest local song…

To hell with Victoria Beckham, Melanie Brown, and the other aging Spice Girls and their so-called reunion. We’ve found a better outlet to get overloaded with girl power — Platform Wednesdays, a hump-day hootenanny and “queer dance party” that goes down at E-Lounge, 4343 North Seventh Avenue. Every week, smokin’…

We don’t want to hate on downtown Phoenix. Sure, it has its problems, but bagging on this city is as played out as skinny jeans. We’re over it. So when a new bar opens up, we get super-stoked. Such was the case when we hopped into The Rose & Crown…