After two solo live albums, it’s easy to forget Jackson Browne’s versatility as a musician, which might be boiled down to one key characteristic: He’s a great listener. On his first new album in six years, Time the Conqueror, and on its tour, Browne features background vocalists Chavonne Morris and…
Mickey Avalon’s been through some shit, man. His mom had him selling weed for her when he was just a teenager. She fired him a little while later, though, when she discovered he was shooting up smack at the age of 16. And things got only stickier and trickier from…
The Faint’s dystopian paeans to dysfunctional, metaphorically “mechanized” relations unfold beneath gloomy analog burble and synthetic beats. It’s not exactly ironic, nor is it particularly poignant at this point, though it may not matter after a dozen years building a passionate following. While the band’s fifth studio LP, Fasciinatiion, returns…
Comfort For Change
Stories that didn’t hit the page…
(Self-released)
By Martin Cizmar
It’s not often a local band without a record deal delivers a product as polished as Comfort For Change’s Stories that didn’t hit the page…
By Lilia Menconi Check the slideshow, will ya? They say it’s a good thing to step out of your comfort zone every once in a while. So we decided to push ourselves this past Friday, skip dinner to keep our bellies flat and amp up the glam factor with a…
By Martin Cizmar As I mentioned earlier this week, The Stiletto Formal is having two CD Release parties for ¡Fiesta, Fiesta, Fiesta, Fiesta! this week. Saturday’s show at The Rogue also features Black Carl and Montresors, as well as DJ William Fucking Reed. It’s all promoted Psyko Steve, so sounds…
Harmonious Ottawa indie rockers The Acorn bring their folk-minded sound to the Valley this Saturday. Along with them will be Portland hipsters The Shaky Hands, who have impressed critics and wooed fans with their eponymous 2007 debut and this year’s brilliant follow-up, Lunglight. The Shaky Hands, with their irresistible rhythm…
You know that old saying about how bumblebees were never designed to fly but nobody told the bees that? Well, that’s kind of how it is for the members of Cowboy Mouth — four radio rockers who probably should’ve called it quits in the late ’90s. But instead of taking…
Ranging in style from hip-hop to punk to, arguably, metal, The Stiletto Formal is creating quite the buzz. Sure, it could be because it’s one of the few signed local bands, or it could be because of its forthcoming CD, ¡Fiesta, Fiesta, Fiesta, Fiesta!, or it could be because its…
Phil Elverum began his shambling psych-pop effort The Microphones during the late ’90s, mixing fuzzy drone, pastoral songwriter folk, and lo-fi experimentation in music that often is as shrouded in sounds as his Olympia, Washington home is in clouds. He scotched the moniker after 2003’s moribund concept album Mount Eerie,…
Like the old saying goes, all good things must come to an end. So even though it’ll break their hearts to see it go, the DJs of the Salacious Beat Slingers are ending the long-running Fat’s Breaks night. Debuting last spring, the Tuesday-night affair (originally called “A Case of the…
By Lilia Menconi Get something a little more metal in the slideshow. So, after reading the New Times Best of Phoenix Award for the death metal band, Hellen, we thought one of their live shows would drudge up a club candids-worthy crowd for sure. And, just as we suspected, Joe’s…
Graceful Degradation
There You Go
(Self-released)
By Martin Cizmar
As I wrote last week, every band selected for You Asked For It, no matter how bad, gets at least one spin when they go in the queue. Graceful Degradation got a lot more than that as I listened to their three-song EP, There You Go, at least ten times today. Honestly, I still can’t think of much to say about it.
By Martin Cizmar
Halloween creeps ever closer, and with it the concert posters get ever darker. Like this one for Sadisco* collective’s monthly party this Saturday.
“Don’t you know you’re in the presence of greatness, bwoi?” Brother Ali snarls from the pulpit on “Original King,” shortly before launching into a brief refresher course/sermon for the uninitiated over a beat that sounds like Earth Wind and Fire on crack: “I bring it like it never been brung/Swing…
If there’s one way that Cousins of the Wize’s second album, The Art of Living, suffers, it’s in poor track sequencing. There’s a lot to like here, from the radio-ready “Two Bottles of Beer” to the instrumental “Spaghetti Western,” which could easily be subbed into the Kill Bill soundtrack without…
In a match made in piano-rock heaven, Dresden Dolls vamp Amanda Palmer teamed with fellow ivory-tickler Ben Folds to produce this strings-and-spinet stunner. Originally, the singer had planned a low-budget project, showcasing some songs she felt sounded better without Dolls collaborator Brian Viglione’s distinctive drumming. Palmer’s vocal acrobatics, dynamic pianism,…
Facing New York is a band that easily defies pigeonholing. Their brand of heavy-handed melodies infused with a jazz-like swagger is remarkable — especially considering what it means to be an “indie rock” band these days. Convention is hardly their main concern, as evidenced on a song like “Comin’ Up,”…
Since rising to international fame in 2002 with the rowdy, inventive Original Pirate Material, British MC Mike Skinner — a.k.a. The Streets — has released a series of increasingly sincere albums. Starting with his 2004 narrative-heavy masterpiece A Grand Don’t Come for Free, he has turned his attention to simple,…
Amie Miriello sounds strangely familiar at times. Spinning her record, you get a comfortable feeling, as if you’ve known her since the late ’90s, when many similar female artists hit the scene — think Sheryl Crow, Tori Amos, and Alanis Morissette. One can definitely hear angry grrrl echoes of Morissette…
When you’re a new band, one of the biggest challenges can be describing the style of music you play to journalists, especially if it doesn’t fit into a neat and tidy category. Take the case of the Montreal trio Plants and Animals: Though their songs evoke several classic-rock styles (psych…
Born Ruffians, a nascent Toronto trio, move with mesmerizing twitch, shouting with childish abandon, as if they were Hot Hot Heat stuck in an elevator with the Go! Team. Frontman Luke Lalonde’s guitar tone is thin and shrill, switching between jagged Pixies pulses and more lugubrious indie noodling, like that…
