Okay, okay. What’s New Times doing reviewing a choral group? It’s gotta be some stale, pretentious stuff, accessible only to blue-haired old geezers, high-brow music connoisseurs, and aristocrats, yes? You’ve even heard that there are tea and crumpets during intermission like at an English cricket match at the Sussex County Cricket Club, right?
It’s one thing to see a “live musician” perform with a computer DJ, surrounded by blinding special effects. It’s quite another to hear the naked soul of a songwriter, accompanied only by her own piano (and three light bulbs for special effect). The latter proves far more compelling — at least when the singer pounding the keys and beat-boxing the lyrics is Regina Spektor.
Photos and review by Steve Jansen Better than: Indulging in the usual Monday night fare, which is laying in my own filth at home and listening to Coast to Coast on 550 AM KFYI. Bay area-based musician Ash Reiter brought her unique singer/songwriter routine to Carly’s Bistro for the first…
In the United States, we take classic rock for granted. It’s become part of the very fabric of our being. And unless you get into deep album cuts (you know, the songs that aren’t played on the radio day after day), it’s hard to let go and just enjoy the…
Like an imaginative, hyperactive kid let loose amid the instruments in an elementary school music room, Minneapolis native Andrew Broder spent his first couple of albums under the Fog moniker crafting charming, headphones-paradise tunes out of turntables, guitars, strangely affecting vocals, found noises, and lots more sonic oddities. Yet Fog…
Gemini Soul takes jazz and injects it with a heavy, rhythmic dose of funk. Bass player André Marcel Ajamu Akinyele’s four-string coils itself around the steady snare percussion with a springing and throbbing reminiscent of Me’shell Ndegéocello’s low-end jams on softer songs like “Gypsy” and “Hang on to Your Love,”…
As much fun as warehouse raves can be — what with all the thrill of thrashing around in some anonymous location that could be visited by the po-po at any moment — occasionally, we dig on getting some after-hours dance action in a legal venue. Such will be the situation…
Thursday 8 Bikini Lounge: Sophisticated Boom Boom with DJ HFE (rockabilly, surf, jazz, classic country, indie, obscuro) The Blooze: DJ El Dedo (rockabilly) Bunkhouse: DJ Doom (dance) Dirty Pretty: Foxy Bitch Thursday (rock, Top 40, hip-hop) Hollywood Alley: The Blunt Club & Furious Styles Crew Anniversary with Pickster One, DJ…
There are certain holidays that call for a celebration extension, and Halloween is definitely one of them. We partied it up over the pre-Halloween weekend, but we just didn’t get our fill of costumed dudes and whore-ish ladies. So we decided to check out the Ruby Room on Wednesday, October…
It’s 7:30 on a Saturday night in September, and Asylum is already packed. The Tucson club is the only venue in Arizona that consistently caters to fans of industrial music, and this evening, it’s filled to capacity with black-clad twentysomethings dressed like pallbearers from a Mad Max movie. Although night…
Say Anything frontman Max Bemis was diagnosed three years ago as bipolar, which, he says, made absolute sense considering the manic episodes he had been experiencing for some time. If that wasn’t enough, he was also trying to survive a volatile breakup with his first love, an experience that, along…
Are the Resonars a “real band” or aren’t they? Only Matt Rendon knows for sure, and he’s not saying (yet). To paraphrase the immortal Bard, what’s in a band . . . as long as platters as nifty as Nonetheless Blue result? Tucson’s Resonars is basically singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Matt Rendon (Vultures,…
Scott Johnson’s new release is a fusion of all that is local. While the Gin Blossoms’ guitarist has risen to national success and recognition, this album truly does feel homegrown. That might have something to do with the album’s being recorded primarily at local studios or, perhaps, it’s a result…
Although fans of his multiplatinum vehicles Tool and A Perfect Circle like to paint him as an arcane, poetry-drunk, Jim Morrison-esque frontman, Maynard James Keenan is one puerile sonofabitch at heart; and with Puscifer, his long-in-the-making solo vehicle, Keenan shows just how dirty (and funny) he can be when he…
Chicago-based DJ Felix Da Housecat takes a journey back to disco with his new release, navigating through sonic textures from that bygone era. Hearing it, you notice that Felix carefully researched the genre when it was at its highest point (circa 1979) and now acknowledges how it influenced today’s dance…
We miss Buck Owens. Genial, shrewd, goofy, and incredibly gifted, Owens shared the pop and country music stage with the vast crowd of ’60s musical wunderkinder. He stood his Top 40 ground with the Beatles, who liked him enough to cover him (“Act Naturally” was Ringo’s signature theme), while performers…
If you like tales of cocaine and depravity mixed with gospel/soul tinges and down-home twang, Old Crow Medicine Show has just what you’re looking for. The members of the bluegrass-meets-blues outfit are fervent — one might even say fanatical — disciples of Gillian Welch’s partner in crime, David Rawlings, and…
Otep Shamaya says, “Art is war.” The singer for her namesake L.A.-based metal-fusion band, Otep, considers herself a revolutionary, and makes art catharsis via visceral screams and songs that sear the ears like hot grease. Her lyrics are laden with apocryphal poetics about religion, politics, love, and loathing; she’s a…
God bless K Records’ tousled-bedhead messes, but it’s a mystery to us what, exactly, Saturday Looks Good to Me are doing on this label’s roster. These Ann Arbor, Michigan-based indie-poppers simply have their “gee willikers” stuff a bit too together, you know? Neither Calvin Johnson nor Phil Elverum had a…
Flashback to a year ago: I’m rolling around in bed one morning, wanting to vomit and complaining about my acid reflux. My young girlfriend is just emerging from the shower when I bellow at her to throw me the Zantac. My door swings open, and a bottle hits me hard…
In an effort to bring a more multi-media music experience to our readers, we’re gonna start posting Wednesday previews of what’s coming up in the week’s print music section of Phoenix new Times. But rather than just pimp our ink, we’re also going to post MP3s, YouTube clips, and photos, to give you a better idea of what these bands actually sound/look like. We want to give a more full-on sensory experience. We want to reach out and touch you. We’re working on scratch ‘n’ sniff links.
Sorry to be the bearers of bad tidings to all you Ingrid Michaelson fans out there in the PHX, but the indie pop singer’s concert — scheduled to go down tonight at Martini Ranch in Scottsdale — was canceled within the last 24 hours.
