Imagining next year’s alt-rock “Class of ’96” reunion . . . “Look over there,” says Duncan Sheik to Tracy Bonham. “It’s the singer from Dishwalla!” “Wow,” Bonham replies. “Instead of ‘Counting Blue Cars,’ I hear he’s washing blue cars these days.” “Oh, you are so terrible,” Sheik says, laughing. “Hey,…
If Fast Food Nation and Super Size Me didn’t steer you (no pun intended) away from the McDonald’s drive-through, listening to vegetarian grindcore warriors Cattle Decapitation’s “Lips & Assholes” as you’re about to pull up to order that Big Mac just might: “The juice off the floor becomes an additive/A…
This Michigan quintet sounds like the orphaned children of several genres, mixing supple post-punk, a distortion-drenched wall of guitar riffing, and indie rock melodicism in a gumbo of dynamics and aggression. There are echoes of emo in the band’s ’90s alt-rock influences; some tracks stumble forward, limping with obvious pain…
If you wonder why former Clive Davis wonderchild Whitney Houston is such a mess these days, look no further than current Clive Davis wonderchild Alicia Keys, who has not only excellent pipes but jaw-dropping songwriting skills that she’s been showcasing since age 14. Without the vocal conceit a diva like…
1. 50 Cent, The Massacre (Aftermath) 2. Mars Volta, Frances the Mute (Universal) 3. Jack Johnson, In Between Dreams (Universal) 4. Judas Priest, Angel of Retribution (Sony) 5. Green Day, American Idiot (Warner Bros.) 6. Norma Jean, O God the Aftermath (Tooth & Nail) 7. The Game, The Documentary (Aftermath)…
Since there’s only room for one indie rock savior at a time, Okkervil River leader Will Sheff currently gets to play Mark Lanegan to Conor Oberst’s Kurt Cobain. Sheff’s an equally gifted songwriter with moderately similar stylistic sensibilities, but sans Oberst’s magazine covers and prominent positioning on Wal-Mart CD racks…
Hella is a two-piece that must be seen to be appreciated. It’s not an extensive visual display, just the breathtaking spectacle of two musicians tangling with their instruments with an intensity reserved for assailants in a back-alley knife fight. This shamanistic experimental rock duo is what jam bands would sound…
Dave Insley arrived in Arizona straight off a Kansas wheat farm, initially playing guitar in honky-tonks around Wickenburg, Yarnell and Payson before settling in Tempe in 1979 — where he suddenly found himself playing traditional country for punks more accustomed to Jodie Foster’s Army and the Meat Puppets. To fit…
Beat addicts, here’s your chance to see the ‘Nix’s next superstar DJs in their larva stages at our own New Times DJ Competition, Friday, March 11, at Myst (7340 East Shoeman Lane in Scottsdale). The finalists are DJs Matty, Sean Morley, Soloman, Sonique des Fleurs, and Tranzit, and after their…
Yikes, what hath the Darkness wrought? It was only a matter of time before you’d want hammy operatic shrieking delivered by a chick who could scale heights even gonads scrunched up in spandex never dreamed of visiting. The idea of bearing witness to the spectacle of head-splitting Stephonik X and…
A band had better have a double keg of chutzpah on hand when its idol and main influence is in the room. Luckily for the Yuppie Pricks, Jello Biafra has a sense of humor — one that the band has appropriated, along with the grubby urgency of the Dead Kennedys’…
If you were driving cross-country in the ’50s and ’60s, you prayed for sundown, because after dark, you picked up the signals of outlaw Mexican radio giants XERB, XEG and XERF. Long before the FM revolution, the X stations played an eclectic mix of honky-tonk, blues, Texas swing, norteño, and…
On A Healthy Distrust, rapper Sage Francis’ solo debut for Epitaph, a predominantly punk label, the New England native teams up with producer Dangermouse (of Grey Album fame) for “Gunz Yo,” the first song to address hip-hop’s firearms fixation in academic terms. On it, Francis lambastes “a homophobic rapper/Unaware of…
Bullet Train to Moscow is back with a spankin’ new self-titled disc, and fans will surely be pleased to have it in their hands. Bullet Train blasts through 14 songs that are everything you’d expect from this local five-piece: fast, fun, and a little funny. Billing itself as an “every…
Eroticide learned not to wave dildos in front of children the hard way. After one of the band’s sexually explicit shows, which include all manner of lewd, homemade props, sex toys, and simulated sexual slashings, the City of Mesa slapped the hardcore band with a number of obscenity charges. Then…
The back of Koko Taylor’s 1978 record The Earthshaker shows a black-and-white photo of the blues belter and her band in a smoke-filled bar, seated around a table that’s packed with bottles of booze, loose $10 bills, and Pall Mall cigarettes. Taylor is looking at the camera, disheveled hair falling…
Los Lobos exploded out of the barrios of Los Angeles in 1983 with and a time to dance, a seven-song mini-album that meshed Mexican folk music, blues, rock and R&B into a unique sound, long before the terms “Americana” and “roots rock” were standard music lingo. In the early ’90s,…
1. Iron & Wine, Woman King (Sub Pop) 2. Low, The Great Destroyer (Sub Pop) 3. Matt Sweeney and Bonnie Prince Billy, Superwolf (Drag City/Caroline) 4. Death Cab for Cutie, John Byrd EP (Barsuk) 5. M. Ward, Transistor Radio (Merge) 6. Mogwai, Government Commissions: BBC Sessions 1996-2003 (Matador) 7. The…
In recent years, James Murphy has undeniably helped direct the hipster strata of New York music. DFA, the label that he produces with partner Tim Goldsworthy, is the Neptunes of indieland, lending guidance and technical savvy to a who’s who of exploratory bands, from the Rapture to Black Dice to…
In the language of analog recording, “wow” and “flutter” were terms used to describe the distortion common to the recording process. The title of The Kills’ second album is obviously ironic, because the duo’s powerful, stripped-down sound is built on a foundation of fuzz, feedback and distortion. Hotel, a highly…
Tom Russell is best known as a hip cowboy/country singer-songwriter, and he’s always interesting in that capacity. But this new disc is something else entirely — it’s Russell’s odd, brilliant introduction and homage to the deviant geniuses who made life interesting in the last two-thirds of the 20th century. There’s…
The Swedish cats in Mando Diao have spent a long time with their British Invasion albums. On Bring ‘Em In, their debut salvo, their Beatles-meets-Yardbirds take on Brit pop combined an uncanny gift for melody with a fuzzed-out twin guitar attack. This time, the influences are more diverse, but the…
