After the exhilarating one-two punch of last year’s Stereo/Mono, you might’ve expected a knockout single disc of Paul Westerberg, all killer and no filler, a disc that gave jaw-dropping ballads and inspired throwaways equal time and maybe revealed something about the cigar-chomping Minneapolitan you didn’t already know. What you’ve got…
As it must, the Strokes’ second LP registers as something of a disappointment. After all, Room on Fire sounds like the Strokes’ debut — and once they remade the world in their own prickly, swivel-hipped image, nothing that sounds vaguely similar to 2001’s Is This It could ever best its…
Anyone who has followed the trajectory of Van Morrison’s career knows he began as a brooding but brilliant Belfast singer, blending R&B with Irish mysticism, punk rage and a little narcissism, creating a pulsating groove that has never been duplicated. That was then. Forty years later, what mostly remains is…
Yes, the rumors are true — Spiritualized leader Jason Pierce has sworn off rock ‘n’ roll excess. But we’re not talking about a 30-day stint in rehab followed by an allegiance to yoga. Rather, there’ll be no more symphony conductors on speed. Big gospel choirs, begone! Fiddling with massive overdubs…
Sascha Konietzko is one daft businessman. The enigmatic leader of the industrial rock band KMFDM, Konietzko hires a rotating group of musicians to fill out his lineup. When his group became a little too cocky a few years back, he ditched them and founded MDFMK. “KMFDM was always my project…
“What Would Jerry Do?” The bumper sticker on the old Toyota Celica, parked outside the Sail Inn, the friendly little Tempe bar that’s quietly become a haven for the local jam-band scene, can’t say it any better. If there’s a guiding principle behind the Saturday night event, the finals in…
In the early 1990s, it was hard to find a Valley band that didn’t know, and somehow benefit from knowing, Julie Hurm-Tessitore. A local music “it” girl, she was connected to the local scene to a ridiculous degree. Hurm-Tessitore worked for Evening Star Productions, promoter Danny Zelisko’s baby in pre-Clear…
One of the more under-reported aspects of Hitler’s march through Europe in the 1930s and ’40s is the destructive effect it had on culture — art, science, literature and music. Wherever their regime spread, the Nazis took pains to erase the societal contributions of Jews, and a generation of vital…
First, it was closing. Then it wasn’t. And now no one is sure what will happen. For 15 years, seven days a week, Long Wong’s on Mill has been a rock ‘n’ roll institution. But these are confusing times. Two weeks ago, the club’s owners told me Wong’s was dead,…
When The Darkness’ Justin Hawkins adds a few extra trills to the last refrain from the band’s debut album Permission to Land’s “Love on the Rocks With No Ice,” you feel like the demented partygoer who takes a few hits of nitrous just to keep up with the acid he’s…
Because he is (or, like, was) a Fugee, seems to genuinely believe in the future of our children and once cut a joint with multimedia titan The Rock, there’s a tendency to forgive Wyclef Jean for the more ill-advised extremes of his apparent mission to make music appealing to all…
Heavy metal’s historical moment continues to stretch itself magnificently, having increasingly more fun in the process. Take Dimension Zero, a band from Sweden with credential-heavy pedigree (In Flames, Marduk) and a John Wayne-like commitment to holding down the fort. Neither wildly excessive nor ready for radio, This Is Hell flails…
There was no shortage of angry political punk back in 1984, thanks to Black Flag’s countless, often premature offspring in the U.S. and bands like the Exploited and Discharge in the U.K. It’s no wonder, then, that New Model Army singer Justin Sullivan saw fit to call himself Slade the…
Rapper Obie Trice peppers his conversations with “dude,” using it in every possible way (and then some). While most would gush, the Detroit native and 8 Mile actor even uses the surfer slang to describe working with his idols Eminem and Dr. Dre on his debut album, Cheers. “Eminem was…
The Fountains of Wayne can be proud that they’ve increased our cultural awareness of the acronym MILF (Moms I’d Like to . . . well, you can figure out the rest). The widely respected but (until now) seldom-played Jersey power-pop band’s “Stacy’s Mom” is a masturbatory tale of a boy…
When Sevendust released its self-titled debut in 1997, music fans had two words — “Living Colour.” It’s an unfortunate and uneducated comparison based solely on the fact that the lead singer, Lajon Witherspoon, is African-American. But Sevendust and Witherspoon can rock with the best of them. Sevendust’s members are considered…
The inherent tension in a band coming out of the hard-core rock scene to court larger audiences is built into the name itself. “Hard-core” implies a scene in which listeners have gone to intense lengths to find their chosen bands, devoted more time to getting at the unfiltered wellspring of…
“Yeah, I jumped off a cliff, but let’s talk about something else,” Elliott Smith told me in 1997. It was shortly after the release of his breakthrough album on Kill Rock Stars, Either/Or, and Smith had recently attempted suicide by throwing himself off a cliff, suffering only minor injuries. Long…
Hip-hop loves Scarface, the Al Pacino flick that just turned 20. Over time, the movie, about a self-made Cuban immigrant drug kingpin, has become part of gangsta rap’s DNA. Scarface’s morally repugnant rags-to-riches narrative, explicit detail about the drug trade and its sense of paranoia, blood lust and greed make…
Oh, Inverted World, the sly, tender 2001 debut by Albuquerque’s The Shins, fairly upended my historically indie-rocking world. Blame it on a stint at college radio, or two-sedan basement tours through the heartland, or too many damn Guided by Voices records, but shaggy-guys-with-guitars had all but ossified into hollow shtick…
Printed in teeny, tiny lettering on the back of challenging Franco-Anglo ensemble Stereolab’s new EP Instant O in the Universe are the words “Mary, thinking about you.” Last December, Stereolab’s billow-voiced vocalist and keyboardist Mary Hansen died in a bike-riding accident. Although her death was tragic, it did have some…
For the past 15 years, Barenaked Ladies have been considered the court jesters of pop. The members of the Canadian quintet have made a living using their quirky sense of humor, singing and rapping about an odd collection of topics — “alternative girlfriend,” wasabi, Brian Wilson, the joys of having…
