Wes Anderson’s new film is his moodiest, most adult yet: Bill Murray’s Steve Zissou, a washed-up oceanographer-filmmaker plainly modeled after Jacques Cousteau, has a heart of gold, of course, but he also curses and behaves irrationally and commands unpaid interns to make him lattes on stolen espresso machines. The film’s…
Junior Kimbrough was a bluesman from the north Mississippi hill country, far enough from the delta to escape the encroachment of most modern conveniences. It was there, removed from outside influences, that Kimbrough developed his wild-ass, uncontrolled style, with rhythms full of unexpected twists and turns and a primal vocal…
“It’s all downhill from here,” Eryn Young declaims on “The Last Migration,” and the band makes good on its threat with a sinister disc overflowing with bleak melodies and an atmosphere fueled by an unlikely mix of electronica and Americana. This husband-and-wife team occupies a space somewhere between the Handsome…
If you didn’t know otherwise while listening to this spellbinding EP, you might swear it’s a recently unearthed Alan Lomax field recording from the 1930s rather than the product of a contemporary alt-folk singer-songwriter. Seattleite Jurado generates that no-fi vibe through the use of “salvaged” reel-to-reel tape (in all its…
With the recent (but supposedly temporary) closing of the Priceless Inn/Boston’s, home of the weekly Blunt Club hip-hop extravaganza, local heads might be worried about filling their nighttime schedules with enough beats and rhymes to keep them from withdrawal convulsions. For now, fear not — Universatile Music, which has brought…
It’s been decades since Chuck Berry merged country and blues pickin’ to write the book on rock ‘n’ roll guitar, and while white Nashville and black Memphis are in the same state, sharing the same cultural roots, you’d never know it unless you’re a roots-music fanatic. Jesse Dayton may not…
The ominous grooves that Shivaree creates for its tales of treachery, frustrated sexuality and emotional defeat sound like the music escaping a carny sideshow tent after midnight. Eerie hints of tango, girl-group R&B, spaghetti Western guitar and musical saw all drift through the music’s disjointed landscapes, weaving a spell that…
You’d need a thousand tongues to taste every culture in New Orleans, and a four-CD boxed set with an 82-page, full-color book to appreciate the sundry musical styles meshing within the Big Easy. Doctors, Professors, Kings & Queens: The Big Ol’ Box of New Orleans contains more than five hours…
Casket Life’s latest press release jokes that the Tempe punk quintet’s plans for 2005 include heavy drinking, but it’s clear from the band’s brief résumé that time spent at the bar hasn’t gotten in the way of kicking ass onstage or in the recording studio. Since forming less than two…
Texas’ state motto is “Don’t mess with Texas.” Texas psychobilly rocker Jim Heath (a.k.a. the Reverend Horton Heat) has his own take on it: “Don’t mess with a man’s hat.” At a show in Indianapolis in 1999, a frisky female fan grabbed the hat off Heath’s head and promptly received…
1. Ludacris, Red Light District (Def Jam) 2. Green Day, American Idiot (Warner Bros.) 3. Gwen Stefani, Love, Angel, Music, Baby (Interscope) 4. Nas, Street’s Disciple (Sony) 5. Arcade Fire, Funeral (Merge) 6. Elliott Smith, From a Basement on the Hill (Anti) 7. Handsome Boy Modeling School, White People (Elektra)…
Is your wallet feeling a bit light after all that holiday shopping? Run down to the Salt River Saloon (605 South Mill Avenue in Tempe) on Tuesday, December 28, and enjoy an economical night of beats and rhymes at Kill Mill, Blow Up Co-op’s weekly hip-hop night with special guest…
For the ethnomusicologist in your life who has everything, The Rose & the Briar and its accompanying book of the same name (published by W.W. Norton) would make a dandy present. Greil Marcus and Sean Wilentz are responsible for both, and they each attempt to define the American ballad, a…
Damn! Did you hear that shit? Sounded like some thunderclap of female rage coming from the direction of Santa Cruz. It’s probably just Moana, the lead screamer, er, singer for Stalins War, the punk buzzbombs who blast out a feverish hybrid of hardcore energy and heavy-metal madness, occasionally switching up…
Grandma may finally be out of traction after that unfortunate reindeer hit-and-run last December, but she’s liable to have a stroke if she hears the lyrics to Blink-182’s prison carol “I Won’t Be Home for Christmas” this holiday season: “Even though the jail didn’t have a tree/Christmas came early/Because a…
Returning after a 15-year-long hiatus — during which leader David Lowery launched the far more successful Cracker (remember “Low”?) — Camper Van Beethoven melds the quirkiness of its earlier incarnation with Cracker’s pop sensibility and a newfound relevance on New Roman Times, thanks to a rich conceptual conceit. Though CVB’s…
This MTV-sponsored mash-up between megaplatinum rapper Jay-Z and megaplatinum rockers Linkin Park isn’t the first time Chester Bennington and his bandmates have looked to rap to spice up their airtight emo-metal crunch-and-munch. For 2002’s Reanimation, the band invited Kutmasta Kurt, Chali 2na, and the X-ecutioners, among others, to remix cuts…
Rather than just presenting a compilation album to promote their own roster, the folks at Five One — a tiny, emo-ish label based in Santa Monica, California — approached some of their favorite musicians and asked them to come up with solo tracks exclusively for this project. And so this…
When it comes time to reinvent themselves, most guitar heroes just start putting out the same old trash in a flashy new can. Steve Turner, lead guitarist of Mudhoney, took a decidedly new tack by stepping forward as a singer-songwriter with a ’60s-tinged folk-pop sound. There are still times when…
The Gourds have been confounding audiences with their catholic musical taste and solid musicianship for almost 10 years. They play credibly in any style you’d care to mention — folk, blues, swamp rock, country — and delight in showing off their range. The title tune is a take on the…
Can we give out a Nobel prize this year for the Most Evolved View of Gender Relations in a Hip-Hop Song Still Saddled With Gratuitous Use of the Word “Bitch”? (We can do it the same night we award the Prehistoric Fuckface trophy to Dr. Calvin “Snoop Dogg” Broadus, whose…
When a band’s cast-off B-sides are good enough to indict an entire subgenre as inane, either the band doesn’t know its own strengths, or a generation of indie-poppers had better put away the four-track and finally apply to graduate school. Outrageous Cherry’s “My Suspicious Midwest” stands somewhere near Hüsker Dü’s…
