We’re just finishing up a nice dinner at Dick’s Hideaway on a random Wednesday night when I hint at the urge to slum it for a few. Carla picks up on my slobbering (and the fact that I’m done paying $9 for a glass of wine). She says she has…
Shane Ocell has the biggest, hardest . . . callus I’ve ever seen. It’s the size of a small marble, sitting on the knuckle of his right middle finger. He cultivated the knot through his unconventional drumming style — holding the stick between his fingers while using the rest of…
Via Vengeance’s songs sound gritty, dense, and calculated. The rhythms are snappy and solid, with seamless, simple timing changes that often lead into even simpler guitar interludes, but show attention to composition nonetheless. Not that Via Vengeance is machinistic prog rock by any stretch of the imagination. This is raw,…
Derivative, repetitive, insipid, insincere, and pandering, Songs About Girls also has the worst insert booklet in recent memory — seven pages of will.i.am mugging in a checkered suit. The first song, “Over,” a lover’s lament featuring a sample from Electric Light Orchestra (never a bad thing) isn’t terrible. But with…
The epic, soaring sonics on Happiness Ltd. , Hot Hot Heat’s latest effort, owe a debt to some tricked-out production that results in a number of satisfying swells. The strongest candidates for airplay are front-loaded for instant gratification, while the rest of the album needs time to ferment. Comparisons to…
While putting together his latest verbose yet exhilarating album, None Shall Pass, Aesop Rock moved from New York to San Francisco, got married, quit smoking, and turned 30. So, it’s not surprising that the record shows changes in his style; rather than battle-rap-style posturing, it focuses on semiautobiographical stories from…
Two things separate real musicians from wanna-bes — the willingness to tour without quarter, and the head-down attitude to plow forward, faithful in one’s abilities. Martin Sexton qualifies on both counts. He busked for the money to make his first album, 1991’s In the Journey, and won a Boston-area music…
Before those hand-holding mop-tops from Liverpool hit these shores, instrumental rock was extremely popular. The charts belonged to The Ventures, Dick Dale, Link Wray (big influence on The Who’s Pete Townshend), and even Brits like the Shadows and Tornados. After Beatles, Stones, Dylan, and the “sophistication” that followed in their…
Like their contemporaries in U.K. Subs, who lived in the same building, the seasoned pub musicians who formed the Vibrators in 1976 brought a blues tradition to the nascent punk scene. But while the scene was highly politicized and angry, the Vibes got their kicks from sexually charged fun; tunes…
For most of the past decade, the record-rocking diva known as Sonique des Fleurs has been a mainstay of the Valley’s EDM scene. Since debuting in 1999, the 30-year-old sultry spinstress has been a fixture at countless local raves, club nights, and DJ events around the ‘Nix (including one gig…
We were out and about with camera in tow in a major way this weekend, looking for the most crazy shindig. It was a weekend of whims, and after a few pre-drinking destinations, we found ourselves at Homme Lounge on Friday, September 28, for the venue’s debut of French Kiss…
About the only thing that Frances Lopez, a.k.a. Miss Franberry, a.k.a. founder of Fizzle Promotions, a.k.a. one of downtown’s hottest young promoters/musicians hadn’t accomplished was starting her own record label to showcase all the local bands she books at venues like Modified Arts and Trunk Space. With the August 2007…
There’s a reason the acoustic, singer-songwriter band Foot Ox has been dubbed “broken folk.” Actually, there are more than a dozen instrumental reasons, as project frontman Teague Cullen not only wields a finely tuned guitar and a distinguishable set of vocal chords, but successfully gigs on far-ranging instruments such as…
Sometimes, the simplest music is the most affecting. So it goes with PJ Harvey’s new studio album, White Chalk, which often feels like a sequel to Björk’s Vespertine. Absent are the scorched-earth guitars and feral vocals for which the songwriter is known. Instead, Chalk finds solace and strength in desolation…
Shawn Camp plays everything from bluegrass to hardcore country, while rockabilly cat Billy Burnette spent almost 10 years with Fleetwood Mac and currently tours with John Fogerty. Their idea of doing Elvis bluegrass-style is a natural, considering Presley got his start with a rockabilly version of Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon…
The Mekons are among the few bands surviving from the “glory days” of punk rock — 2007 marks their 30th anniversary. The reason for their longevity (aside from their members engaging in an assortment of musical activities apart from Mothership Mekons) is their treating music as a constantly changing, evolving…
Though she is only in her early 30s, Dutch-born saxophonist Candy Dulfer is a veteran in her own right, having performed and toured alongside the likes of Dave Stewart, Prince, Aretha Franklin, and others since she was in her late teens. On this new release, she takes smooth jazz in…
The output of Brooklyn duo Mouthus consists — for the most part, anyway — of variations on sepulchral groans. Brian Sullivan’s imploding, acidic guitar gestures and Nate Nelson’s buried-in-the-mix drumming combine to form the things sweet No Wave dreams are made of: gray, fugitive whorls spinning just out of sight…
Rilo Kiley: It’s pop so good your mom will love it — if your mom has good taste in pop music. After sowing some wild musical oats with sweet, sorrowful acoustic country music and sunny indie pop, Jenny Lewis (vocals, keyboards), Blake Sennett (guitar, vocals), Pierre de Reeder (bass guitar,…
The DJs who spin at the HoodRide Bodega stand above the rest of the turntablists in the P-town scene, literally. That’s because the funky downtown Phoenix art hangout, located at 918 North Fifth Street, boasts an eight-foot-high ramshackle DJ fortress built into a tree sprawling out of the sidewalk in…
“What do you think of my yuppie douchebag shirt?” My buddy B-Boy is modeling for me in my living room. He’s draped his 6-foot-4, 350-pound frame in some black dress pants and a collared, button-down shirt. He’s shaved his head so it’s all smooth and shiny, and trimmed his burly…
Georgie James is a duo — specifically, the pairing of John Davis and Laura Burheim. Like The Turtles, they are so happy together, or at least it sounds so. Each of the 12 tunes here draws from the peak pop music of yesteryear, when cheerful songs like The Archies’ “Sugar…
