When Adam Levine and his equally apologetic bandmates in Maroon 5 won Best New Artist at the Grammys in February, perhaps they sensed the beginning of their end. Songs About Jane, pleasant but anonymous, had maintained a healthy run on the Billboard charts, throwing out singles you instantly recognized on…
Here’s how our local music scene works: For some inexplicable reason, during the early winter months when we’re enjoying our best climate, not a whole lot goes on musically. Maybe bands are clocking in a lot of time visiting with their snowbird relatives. Then comes spring break, and BOOM! –…
I must say I had fun listening to this record, but not in the way that its creators may have intended. However much hearing Tori Amos changed singer Julia Bogen’s life (as it says on the band’s official Web site), it’s probably the Y Kant Tori Read era that wielded…
It should be noted that Blue Fur came in as a finalist against winners Downward Dog in a KALT Battle of the Bands, and similarly, this band seems to have a retro ’80s sound — kind of a quirky Lene Lovich/Suzanne Fellini sound. While you’re looking up those faded names…
Dear Chad Gilbert, It’s with a heavy heart that we request you cease all involvement with your side project, Hazen Street, because of contractual obligations to your main gravy train, the popular outfit New Found Glory. We know you were juiced to play guitar with such hardcore rockers as Toby…
Some say The Ponys were too late to the garage rock revival — another me-too gang of half-Strokes, half-Hives hipsters — but anyone who caught the Chicago band in concert last year knows what the real problem was. Lead singer Jered Gummere had a terrible habit of squealing in falsetto…
Over the years, the thing that’s kept the Deftones from being cast as an also-ran in the nü-metal franchise has been Chino Moreno’s subversive sensibilities. The vocalist’s affinity for all things Smiths (Robert, and the outfit led by Morrissey), which is unmistakable in his breathy delivery, has helped the band…
A textbook case on how to do everything the suitable way, Opiate is finally coming out with a full-length on its own terms — on its own imprint label that’s part owned by Concrete Management and Vans Warped Tour/Taste of Chaos creator Kevin Lyman — after negotiating with several majors…
The first thing you’ll say when you see the band shot on this CD is, “These guys need more sleep and less makeup.” Then you’ll slip on Fine China’s disc and get a solid 44 minutes of first-rate melancholia. It shouldn’t work that singer Robert Withem can evoke such empathy…
If you just can’t wait for this weekend’s big StreetDreams hip-hop festival at the Old Brickhouse Grill, stop in at Hollywood Alley (2610 West Baseline Road in Mesa) Thursday night, May 5, for the Blunt Club’s pre-party, featuring local up-and-comer Kid Vicious alongside the residents, Tricky T, Hyder, and Element,…
Martin Atkins, leader of the industrial music collective Pigface, has had a storied career going all the way back to his first big break playing in Public Image Ltd. As a drummer, he lent his talents to Killing Joke, Nine Inch Nails, and Ministry, before coming up with the idea…
If only Sam Phillips had said, “If I could find me a white boy who could play harp like Muddy Waters,” rock history might’ve taken a different turn. But rockabilly’s loss is blues’ gain. Charlie Musselwhite grew up in Memphis (and actually ran moonshine, according to his bio), was friends…
This Phoenix rapper’s all-caps fact sheet states that he’s got “A THREE HUNDRED SONG CATALOG WITH HEATSTROKE CREATING OVER FIFTY OF THOSE HIMSELF,” and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that “OVER FIFTY” is bolded. Despite 50 Cent’s The Massacre becoming a quadruple-platinum album and charting in the Top 5…
A former break-dancing teen turned singer-songwriter from Watsonville, California? Can’t wait for the video. Not sure what brings him to the Valley from the Bay Area, but his first album has some likable acoustic rap-rock moments and a particularly angelic female background vocal that makes nearly every number a treat…
“I don’t go to singer-songwriter shows anymore because they’re boring,” Seattle alt-folkie Damien Jurado recently told Paste magazine. “I don’t care if you’re Conor Oberst or Nick Drake. Boring. Who wants to stand there? Not me.” While I respect Jurado’s opinion, he’s dead wrong, at least when it comes to…
The wonder of music is its ability to transcend cultural barriers and speak in a booming voice directly to the heart. Rory Block is white and a woman, but she’s a truly gifted “bluesman” who knew and trained with the best. The daughter of a Greenwich Village sandal maker at…
If your short memory of this group begins and ends with its alt-rock-before-it-was-alt-rock hit “Anything Anything (I’ll Give You),” you’re in good company. This Wayne, New Jersey, group relocated to California when “Anything Anything” became the most requested song in KROQ’s history after Rodney Bingenheimer gave it his endorsement (founding…
If you haven’t been to Japan or watched the Cartoon Network of late, you might be unaware of the aidorus known as Puffy AmiYumi — the female twosome that’s at least as big, if not bigger, on the streets of Tokyo than even heyday Britney or the Backstreet Boys ever…
Is there any doubt by now that whenever Neko Case opens her mouth, amazing things happen? Through a string of fantastic solo albums beginning in 1997, the flame-haired, 34-year-old Virginia native has established herself as one of the most dynamic country singer-songwriters around. Her pipes are powerful but frayed in…
Artson enters the game with a pedigree: He was a member of the legendary Rocksteady Crew, and his record boasts guest shots by Tash of Tha Alkaholiks, and Likwit Junkie Wildchild. And on a first pass, he passes muster. The production on songs like the album-opening “Who” and the quasi-Latin…
A full five years after the landmark The Unseen, producer/MC/chronic chameleon Madlib once more huffs helium and becomes the high-pitched hooligan Quasimoto. But times have changed and so has ‘Lib, because where The Unseen was a mind-warping fusion of space-age samples and hyperspeed rhyming, The Further Adventures of Lord Quas…
Like its sonic predecessors — jazz, blues and R&B — hip-hop is undergoing a massive assimilation until everything is tinged with, in one way or another, rap. The sheer amount of gimmickry in producing and presenting “original” hip-hop today is daunting, which is why a record like True & Livin’…
