Luddites, fear not — Mouse on Mars has not come to alienate you. On this, their eighth full-length, the Mice instead demonstrate a keen interest in nesting within more traditional song structures. And while no one’s going to be mistaking Mouse on Mars for, say, Harry Nilsson anytime soon, Radical…
Erin Moran, a.k.a. A Girl Called Eddy, must have one heck of a record collection. This set echoes everything that made pop music exciting 40 years ago; think Burt Bacharach composing for the Velvet Underground or Ennio Morricone writing saloon songs for Nancy Sinatra. Moran’s voice, halfway between Marianne Faithfull’s…
Top 10 selling CDs at Zia Record Exchange (3851 East Thunderbird Road) for the week of August 8 through 14: 1. Taking Back Sunday, Where You Want to Be (Victory) 2. Authority Zero, Andiamo (Lava) 3. Various Artists, Rock Against Bush Vol. 2 (Fat Wreck Chords) 4. Velvet Revolver, Contraband…
When the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia died in 1995, patchouli-scented fans tapped the Dave Matthews Band to fill his shoes. Since then, DMB’s career has waxed and waned. Besides a summer playing stadiums, the South African native and his band haven’t lived up to their full potential. One-night stands are…
Where would we be without VH1? How could we possibly live without being hipped to the celebrity trend of “butt facials,” watching vegan reality-show contestants spar with Ted “Kill It and Grill It” Nugent in the backwoods of Michigan, or getting a snarky rehash of ’90s pop culture (sorry, but…
Looking for a good time this weekend? For a smorgasbord of eclectic dance ferocity, check out the impressively titled diverCITY (City Sounds: Let the Music Move You) party happening on Friday, August 20, at the Clubhouse in Tempe. DJs Seduce, Phill, Jonny Ocean, and Melissa Laine will be throwing down…
Marah is a jangly, soulful, gritty, streetwise roots-rock outfit from Philadelphia with a number of friends in high places, some of them better for business than others. Bruce Springsteen loves ’em — he’s given them a big boost by appearing on their albums and inviting them to open gianormous stadium…
Sure, any group can record 10 unhappy tracks in a row and call it an album, but it takes truly accomplished visionaries to make 10 miserable songs into a riveting audiomovie you’d stay to watch the credits for. To the guppies, misery isn’t just a mood, it’s an expansive landscape…
And so we come to last call at the House of GBV, and it’s hard not to get a bit misty. For whatever indifference or disappointment greeted anything he’d made since Under the Bushes, over the years, Bob Pollard had become a bit like The Dude — we took comfort…
What comes to mind when you think of Salt Lake City, Utah? Luxurious homes, looming Mormon tabernacles, men with multiple wives and a dozen little kids, all laughing and running across manicured green lawns toward their SUVs? The Salt Lake City stigma may stick to uncomfortable places, but take a…
These Swedish Jennie bombs came to American attention in 2002 as the female counterpart to the Hives, whose front man Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist dates lead Hotnight Maria Andersson. On their kick-ass third album, the Saharas get away from that easy comparison, sharpening the hooks in their wily garage-pop tunes and…
Boasting a pair of members from metalcore/noise rock pioneers Today Is the Day, Atlanta’s Mastodon follows a similar path, breaking the death-metal mold with unusual time signatures and breaks, passages of rich melody, and a kitchen sink of eclectic sonic textures, couched in an intermittently sludgy, brutal attack worthy of…
The very essence of wacky irreverence, Camper Van Beethoven created music like sonic Unabombers, lobbing folk-inflected conundrums into the marketplace. Whether penning a polka-punk tune like “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” naming its second album II & III, or rerecording Fleetwood Mac’s entire Tusk album while snowbound together in a cabin,…
Xiu Xiu’s emotionally charged synth-pop finds comfort in ’80s music and late-20th-century composers, and finds inspiration in art-rock “do this or die” ideals. On its latest LP, Fabulous Muscles, the San Jose, California-based band pushes keyboards, guitars, violins and drum sets to their physical limits to create sweeping melodies with…
On the beginning of “Hey Y’all” — a track from Approach’s Ultra Proteus full-length, a buffed-up version of his 2002 debut EP — the Kansas City MC makes his intentions clear: “It’s time to do Grandma’s funky popcorn.” While the indie rapper may name-check such rap luminaries as A Tribe…
The Psychedelic Furs have pretty much been a mainstay in alternative rock since the late 1970s, save for a few blips on the radar for lead singer Richard Butler’s solo work and his side project, Love Spit Love. Even though they are not pushing a new album or material, the…
Top 10 selling CDs at Hoodlums (ASU Memorial Union Building in Tempe) for the week of August 2 through 8: 1. The Roots, The Tipping Point (Geffen) 2. Jadakiss, Kiss of Death (Ruff Ryders) 3. Ashlee Simpson, Autobiography (Geffen) 4. The Cure, The Cure (Geffen) 5. Damien Rice, The B-Sides…
With their saccharine-sweet hit “Love Fool,” Swedish pop band the Cardigans were poised to rise above the mid-’90s glut of female-fronted bands like Republica, Chumbawamba, Sneaker Pimps, and Garbage. But although they found success, selling more than 10 million albums worldwide, they suffered from the curse of the one-hit wonder…
You don’t hear many kids saying they want to be in an adult alternative band when they grow up — and no wonder. Unlike punk, ska, metal, industrial and prog rock, adult alternative is perhaps the only genre based not on rebellion but rather redistribution and revision. It’s where people…
Kudos to the members of this Brooklyn hardcore-jazz-tech-metal-hip-hop-spazz-out hybrid for coming back for more after a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler. The aftermath of the crash, which caused critical injuries for some of the band members, is documented on the album cover with photos of the band’s demolished van. It…
This is the Velvets’ last stand, captured on a portable cassette recorder on August 23, 1970, shortly before Lou Reed left the band. Containing an extra hour of performances, the release of the expanded version gave us a chance to speak to guitarist Doug Yule, who still plays music but…
With Soulfly — the band he’s been fronting since a less-than-pleasant split with metal giants Sepultura eight years ago — Max Cavalera has been on a mission to both delight and challenge his longtime followers. While there’s no lack of hardcore bark and guitar growl on the band’s latest album,…
