On “I Feel Better,” the second track off Frightened Rabbit’s breakup diary The Midnight Organ Fight, frontman Scott Hutchison proclaims, “This is the last song I’ll write about you.” If only. It’s these moments of false affirmation and agonizing self-torture — voiced in Hutchison’s thick Scottish accent — that make…
Cyndi Lauper’s crazy hair, outrageous clothes, and Noo Yawk accent pegged her as a patron saint of goofballs, thrift-store queens, and misfits in the 1980s. But underneath her “she’s so unuuuuusual!” exterior lurks an understated pop balladeer and underrated singer who’s had a huge influence on many of modern music’s…
The third album is the one fans generally have to worry about. It’s usually the one in which a band has exhausted its supply of genuinely inspired musical ideas and now has to come up with brilliance on the fly. It has to point to some fearless new direction, one…
Back in 2004, DJ guru Rod Carrillo was all over the Valley’s airwaves and club scene, broadcasting his style of trance and progressive house on Energy Radio 92.7/101.1 FM and spinning at joints like Sky Lounge. These days, Carrillo is busy with getting tracks on the Billboard dance chart (his…
By Benjamin Leatherman What are the Top 10 best-selling albums at East Side Records, 217 West University Drive in Tempe? Here’s a list, yo. 1. Dystopia, Self-titled (Life is Abuse) 2. King Khan and the Shrines, The Supreme Genius of King Khan (Vice) 3. Atmosphere, Sad Clown Bad Spring 12…
She’s 81 years old, dressed in a curve-hugging black velvet dress with a slit all the way from waist to foot, exposing the dress’ red satin interior and the entire length of her shapely leg, which she extends luxuriously toward the people seated below her. Then she crouches down, opens…
Zachary James Dodds sounds too world-weary to be just 22 years old. On his debut five-song EP, Dodds, who also plays guitar for local folkies the Via Maris, spins vivid tales — both real and imagined — that would seem to belie his age. Behind sparse but eloquent arrangements, Dodds…
In 1997, when Portishead’s self-titled second album arrived, the group’s sound was routinely described as trip-hop. Eleven years later, that term is as dead as Fatty Arbuckle, but Portishead is alive again and more captivatingly obtuse than ever. “I never had the chance/To explain exactly what I meant,” lead singer…
The dark electro-musings of Tucson artist Shawn Foree (a.k.a. Digital Leather) have never sounded more spastic, insidious, and danceable than on Sorcerer. This 12-track album blends quirky art-pop influences like Devo, Plastic Bertrand, and Tubeway Army with layers of synthesized desolation, lyrical angst, and gothic intensity to create a morose,…
Poor RZA. When the studio overlord produces a Wu-Tang Clan masterwork, it lands on RCA or Universal. Yet this chessboard fiend, martial-arts aficionado, and Quentin Tarantino pal can’t seem to garner any respect or sales clout as a rapper; Digi Snacks, his latest sonic escapade, is coming out on Koch…
Any band that puts out an 11-minute recording and presents it as a full-length album obviously has a sense of humor. Like Slayer’s shorty classic Reign in Blood (which is twice as long!) and Napalm Death’s Scum before it, Daughters’ Canada Songs is an attempt to capture a metal sub-genre…
The only way to experience a group this vast, colorful, and earthbound is to simply just listen. An excessive use of adjectives seems unjust. Faun Fables and its creator, Dawn McCarthy, seamlessly draw from a spiritual and mythological realm to convey world sounds that are entrancing. The expression “song telling”…
The gravel-voiced, avant-garde king of indescribable booze-jazz/art rock/blues-folk/dissident cabaret is making his first appearance in the Valley in 30 years. Waits’ song characters — whether it’s a hooker in Minneapolis sending a postcard or a lonely kid sitting after hours in Napoleone’s Pizza House — have endured with as much…
British beat-juggler Lee Burridge is sort of a freak. Sure, turntablists are known to be an eccentric lot, but it’s a safe bet your average record spinner has never claimed to have done the nasty in a DJ booth, fallen in love with a Voodoo woman, and bombed around Burning…
After seeing Eartha Kitt perform with the Phoenix Symphony, I had to find an album that contained most of what I’d heard during her performance, and then some. The Very Best of Eartha Kitt is a two-disc, 35-song collection of her best-known works, from “I Want to Be Evil” and…
By Lilia Menconi It’s so nice when this job allows us to take a break from booze every once in a while — which is exactly what we did when we stopped by Red Hot Robot’s One Year Anniversary Party on Saturday, June 7. For more of this, check the…
By Benjamin Leatherman Here’s a rundown of the top 10 best-selling albums at Zia Record Exchange, 105 West University Drive in Tempe, for the week of June 2-8. 1. Weezer, Weezer (Red Album) (Geffen) 2. Disturbed, Indestructible (Reprise) 3. Portishead, Third (Mercury) 4. Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs (Atlantic)…
I thought I’d never write about kegger house parties. I mean, I went to school in Wisconsin. But the other night, after pounding my fifth Stag press (a concoction served up at my favorite local hang, Shady’s, that’s like a vodka Red Bull, but they use a knockoff called “White…
Sometimes, the assholes in charge of dishing out work visas make mistakes. When British rapper Riz MC (who’s Muslim and of Pakistani descent) tried coming to the United States a couple of months ago for a showcase at South by Southwest — followed by a couple of spot dates in…
Hardworking, broken-backed, sweaty-headed, scruffy-looking Kansas Citians the Architects have never tried to win over folks with much more than relentless punk-drenched rock ‘n’ roll honesty. Now, with Vice, the group amps up its sound to arena-rocking levels, throwing in plenty of gang vocals and melodic hooks to make sure it…
Way back in 1996, Robyn reached the Top 10 with “Do You Know (What It Takes).” She followed it up a year later with another big hit, “Show Me Love.” Then she disappeared. This comeback album by the thin-voiced but spunky singer, who’s now 28, was originally released three years…
All the idiosyncratic jangling, clattering carnival-esque swooning, and arch melodrama suggests Tom Waits Malkoviched into David Bowie’s body. Frontman Carey Mercer’s vocals manifest the shrill, anxious delivery of glam Bowie much like Dan Bejar, whom Frog Eyes has backed and with whom Mercer and Wolf Parade’s Spencer Krug created the…
