This Windy City trio likes to lambaste pop-culture targets — especially the Warped Tour world it gets lumped into. Blame the clipped, bubblegum pop-punk drum sound and tempos the group has employed since its formation in ’99. But then the band members lay on slashing riffs and gruff vocals that…
“Hype” is probably the nastiest of all four-letter words these days, and no band on Earth right now has more of it than the Arctic Monkeys. Over the past seven months, the Sheffield quartet — none of whom is of American drinking age — has been lauded as 2005’s “Best…
Merging heavy metal’s satanic symbol with love’s shorthand icon, the heartagram ranks among modern music’s most popular designs. “The symbol is better known than the actual music of our band,” says H.I.M. singer Ville Valo, who invented the emblem. Hundreds of H.I.M. fans, including MTV stunt dude Bam Margera and…
The Hush Sound’s guitarist and co-lead vocalist Bob Morris has his hands full. His band is set to open tonight for Fall Out Boy and the All-American Rejects, his mother won’t stop ringing him (she’s in line outside, confused by how to collect her ticket), and, oh yeah, there’s this…
Interviewing Sammy “The Red Rocker” Hagar woulda been great and all, but I had a few other things I had to get done last week. Like the dishes, and, uhh, taking some naps. So let’s just let Sammy’s lyrics do the talking: Me: Hey, man, how’re you doing these days?…
On Tuesday, which happens to be the one time this century that the calendar’s readout is 6/6/6, the local rawk prophets in Steppchild — Adam Jacobsen, Adam Roach, and Adam Carter — will debut the band’s long-in-the-making rock opera, appropriately titled King, Adam. (And yes, the comma is supposed to…
Daniel Smith usually gets by with a little help from his friends, but lately he’s been getting a lot. In the case of the heavenly new album Ships, released by this musical mastermind under the new, all-purpose moniker Danielson, that means contributions from at least 30 of his family and…
You know Elvis Costello: angry young punk with talent to spare turned middle-aged (52 candles this summer) master collaborator. Preceding projects have promulgated an array of songwriting trysts (Bacharach and McCartney and wife Diana Krall, to name but a few) as well as orchestral dalliances with the Brodsky Quartet and…
Impatient ears will hear the pretty indie gloss of Camera Obscura and quickly dismiss it as twee chamber pop, but while the sextet’s sunny music pleases on contact, front woman Tracyanne Campbell has more on her mind than sweet refrains. While the galloping opener, “Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken,”…
A vision of smeared red lipstick, smudgy eyeliner, and a cotton candy tangle of platinum hair, Theo Kogan was an early ’90s icon as the petulant, potty-mouthed front woman of all-girl punk band the Lunachicks, who ruled the New York club scene after the sea change of grunge unleashed a…
While mosh-inclined fans and occasional employment of screamo vocals often pigeonhole Seattle trio The Fall of Troy into the hardcore genre, the skill level of the barely legal members’ playing suggests that there is more to this group than circle pits and screeches. Guitarist Thomas Erak loops his uncontrollably speedy…
If Lyle Lovett is the thinking man’s Texas songwriter, Robert Earl Keen is the drinking thinking man’s Texas songwriter. Since the late ’80s, Keen’s cockeyed, barstool’s-eye view of life’s landscape has lured love from the alt-country set and diehard frat partyers in equal measure. Lumped in early on with the…
Has any American artist — whether it be filmmaker, author or musician — responded to 9/11 more vigorously than Bruce Springsteen? Between The Rising, Devils & Dust, and this year’s We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, Springsteen’s recent material has laboriously detailed the human fallout from that day’s attacks and…
The legendary DJ Vadim has been gaining accolades in the underground hip-hop community for ages now, working with a who’s who of MCs and holding his own as an instrumental sonic architect. Across the Atlantic pond, where the Russian-born DJ holds down a residency in London called Loose Change, Vadim…
Cutting her teeth with unique Parisian band Nouvelle Vague (whose last album featured bossa nova covers of ’80s songs by the likes of Joy Division), Camille’s second solo outing has already won accolades on her home continent. A predominantly a cappella record, occasionally backed by light yet effective instrumentation, Le…
Since rapper Timothy “Gift of Gab” Parker and Xavier “DJ Chief Xcel” Mosely formed Blackalicious in 1987 while attending high school in Sacramento, California, the duo has persevered from one hip-hop generation to another. The two have seen musical tastes change from the trendy youth culture of the late ’80s…
To metalheads everywhere: There appears to be some confusion about a particular number in reference to me and my eminence. Somewhere between the misinterpretations of numerologists, that movie with the scary kid, and the occasional nod from a handful of spandex-wearing musicians in the late 20th century, all of you…
Thursday 1Axis/Radius: Scooter & Lavelle (hip-hop) Barcelona: DJ Rob (dance) The Bunkhouse: DJ Doom (dance) Camus: KURRENT_affairs with Pablo Gomez (electronic, rock, pop, avant-garde) Club Central: DJs Ernie G. (hip-hop, R&B) & Luis (salsa, merengue) The Crown Room: DJ Gable (rock, house, hip-hop) The Door: DJ J Nasty (hip-hop, Motown,…
The 18 tracks compiled on Invaders present a rare glimpse inside Kemado A&R chief Keith Abrahamsson’s troubled cranium. Though these bands share musical touchstones (it’s pointless even to mention Black Sabbath), each takes its influences in a slightly different direction. Leaning toward the sludgy bludgeoning of groups such as Saviours,…
It takes balls to do a solo acoustic set in the middle of a bill consisting of loud bands, mostly because it’s so easy to fall flat on your face and turn the crowd off completely. A few weeks ago, though, I saw a kid pull it off. On a…
British phenom Jamie Cullum’s 2003 breakthrough Twentysomething offered up a fresh take on jazz — sort of a Michael Bublé/Robbie Williams cocktail — but with his latest, Catching Tales, he’s added hip-hop to the mix, thanks to a few tricks he learned from Pharrell Williams (catch their duet “You Can…
Three years ago, producer/engineer Otto D’Agnolo was of two minds about the decline of originality and forward thinking in the record industry, so he did something about it. He split himself in two — literally. Sick of being told by A&R people with the musical impulses of a hand buzzer…
