On its seventh record, the Portland trio Sleater-Kinney finds itself in the same predicament as its heroes Sonic Youth and tour mates Pearl Jam: It’s honed its sound so precisely that it has to decide where to go next. With The Woods, the answers are jumping to indie-label heavyweight Sub…
While band-of-the-moment Franz Ferdinand and the opportunists in its wake are hyped as “dance rock,” Gang of Four, the cool-influence-of-the-moment, barely played rock at all, much less dance music. 1979’s Entertainment!, the debut of the now-reunited British quartet, is a trove of beguilingly tilted political songs, more alien to hoary…
Though they’re known for their laptop beat acrobatics, Canadian duo Junior Boys will actually be putting the needle on the records after their show with fellow Canuck Caribou on the evening of Saturday, May 21. The show with Caribou (recently known as Manitoba) is at Modified Arts, but the DJ…
It’s safe to call Ferret Music a metal and hardcore label. After all, the owner is the lead singer of NORA; the big band on the label is Every Time I Die; and Killswitch Engage got its start with Ferret. But somehow, Boys Night Out was scooped up by the…
All our favorite local bands play weekend shows. Unfortunately, the shows aren’t often at the same place. Traipsing from Tempe to Phoenix and back again in an attempt to catch more than one killer live set on a Friday night isn’t fun — at least not every weekend. But luckily,…
Troubled Hubble’s debut is something of a revival of the suburban psychedelia practiced by ’90s indie bands such as Pavement, but with a literate new twist. The Chicago-area quartet’s music is, characteristically, a weave of trebly guitars stitched with strings and eclectic snatches of sound. Singer Chris Otepka declaims up…
Twinkling bells, trembling guitars and tiny music boxes — these are the things that make up Golden Morning Breaks. A low and haunting piece of ambient music, Morning is the work of Colleen Schott, a French performer with a cut-and-paste approach. Often, this sort of delicate electronic music can be…
1. Weezer, Make Believe (Geffen) 2. Dave Matthews Band, Stand Up (RCA) 3. The Starting Line, Based on a True Story (Drive-Thru) 4. The Format, Snails EP (Atlantic) 5. Fall Out Boy, From Under the Cork Tree (Island) 6. Team Sleep, Team Sleep (Maverick) 7. Spoon, Gimme Fiction (Merge) 8…
Sure, the Japanese pop culture spectrum has an abundance of too-adorable kitsch (Hello Kitty’s only the tip of the iceberg) countered by an incredibly dark side (just Google the word hentai). But what’s even more fascinating — and somehow a little less familiar to foreigners — is the stuff that’s…
Almost a year after its European release, Leslie Feist’s debut solo album, Let It Die, has finally been released stateside, to the delight of many a patient fan. The buzz surrounding Feist has slowly been building because of her work with the indie-rock collective Broken Social Scene and electroshock maven…
Subject: Quirky Actress Seeks Rockin’ Band Reply to: juliettel@craigslist.org Hey all you musicians out there! My name is Juliette Lewis. You might remember me as the girl who sucked Robert De Niro’s thumb in Cape Fear or the crazy chick who went on a bad-ass rampage with Woody Harrelson in…
After two albums of hazy, somnambulant indie-pop, the Comas took a huge step forward with the release of last year’s Conductor. The bubbling thrush of electronic washes and ringing, jangling guitars is like sunshine peeking through the album’s gray emotional skies. Composed in the aftermath of lead singer/guitarist Andy Herod’s…
Club crowds are more than willing to accept avant-garde experimentation, as long as it comes equipped with chant-along choruses and wicked dance beats. Mahjongg, a self-consciously kooky collective whose members hail from Chicago and Columbia, Missouri, enjoys obtuse word play, overlapping vocals and inscrutable song structures, but it also breaks…
The bicoastal Boston/Berkeley MC Mr. Lif makes the sort of politically charged Bolshevik boom-bap that warms the coffee of both old-school hip-hop fans and MoveOn.org activists. Which — despite what that demographic might indicate — doesn’t mean that Lif can’t get down and party. On Black Dialogue, his new group…
Sneaky and subtle where other bands are brash and overstated, Austin’s Spoon has enjoyed a comfortable anonymity for the bulk of its nine-year life span. That started to change with 2002’s Kill the Moonlight, a record that found the group fiddling with its own aesthetic to create songs that wobbled…
According to such dot-com authorities as Pitchfork and Allmusic, Hot Hot Heat’s long-awaited new album is a disappointing lump of crap. Maybe everyone’s just sick of hearing shitty bands that sound like Hot Hot Heat — because it’s hard to find a single serious fault with Elevator. From the double-knotted…
Prince Paul doing an official turntable album is a little like Steve Vai, or any of the other guitar gods that Paul and his peers supplanted, doing an official guitar album: It was always the point — the only difference is that he’s admitting it. So here’s Prince Paul sans…
The Valley’s original underground massive dance event, Swell Records’ Acid Reign VII, is returning this Saturday, May 14, with headlining performances by legends such as Woody McBride (a regular at the Acid Reign events), who’s appearing as part of the “Midwest Acid Pyramid” three-DJ, four-turntable set with DJ Hyperactive from…
Classically trained cellist Melora Creager conceived Rasputina in 1991, and the group opened for Nirvana on its final tour. Comprising three cellists clad in Victorian garb playing driving rock with gothic undertones, Rasputina released three albums in its first decade of existence with a somewhat revolving cast of musicians. In…
The gorgeous strain of Gibril Bennani’s violin begins this album canvassing North African folk music in the context of ProTools. This is not to suggest electronic tampering akin to the Algerian pop sounds of raï. Cheb I Sabbah indeed includes the urban-centric style — as well as tinde, aïta and…
Formed from the ashes of stoner rockers Kyuss, Josh Homme built Queens of the Stone Age on the same core, but created something entirely new, imbuing the band’s hard rock with elements of psychedelica and other offbeat touches. While the music churns with intensity, Homme takes advantage of dynamics, opening…
If you dig B-movies, bands that care more about their fans than money (as long as those fans are purchasing beer), and fast music, you need to be at The Attic on Friday night. The Groovie Ghoulies will be joined by a handful of local hooligans to give you a…
