How awful it must be for all of the bands that are not Yo La Tengo. Year in, year out, the Hoboken, New Jersey, trio delivers the kind of honest, beautiful music that few groups even know exist, let alone get close to capturing. The 10th record from these indie-rock…
Talking to Ben Harper feels a lot like infringing on his personal space. Through his work — an evocative mélange of postmodern folk blues — Harper seems to divulge important parts of himself, doled out in small bits. Yet as much as he expresses through his art, in conversation he…
The driver at the Burbank International Airport opens the rear door to his cab and I hop in. He slides into the front seat, puts it into gear and pulls out. Moving toward the airport exit, I tell him the name of my hotel. We turn north and roll toward…
Remember when every year that passed was the 25th anniversary of something? The release of Sgt. Pepper. The first performance of Tommy. Jimi and Janis’ expiration dates. Then when it got to be the 25th anniversaries of “Disco Duck” and the Osmonds usurping the Jacksons on the pop charts, people…
It would be so easy to dismiss The Cure as a band that has outlived its usefulness, that exists long beyond its expiration date. Its best, or at least best-known, moments live in another time, one long since past — the 1980s, to be precise, back when “Let’s Go to…
Given that this Chapel Hill, North Carolina, combo’s willful brand of anonymity-mongering ranks alongside Will Oldham’s irritating early dalliances with Palace self-obfuscation, one is tempted to level accusations of preciousness at it. Nowhere in the sleeve credits does one obtain personnel or instrumentation details, merely song titles, thank yous, and…
8T[thnson must be a patient man. It’s been six years since the last album of new The The music (and four since the all-Hank Williams covers set Hanky Panky), but he continues to sound very much like himself. As the one constant member of the band, he has collaborated with…
Rapping and scratching on an album released by Hightone — Hightone? The torch-bearing label for all roots music? What’s going on here? No, it’s not a hip-hop album, but it is something quite remarkable. Call it roots music with soul. And it may only be February, but it wouldn’t be…
Sandy Lovejoy met Tim Cole through a newspaper love-match ad. A few weeks later, they were married. About eight months after the wedding, on February 1, she was dead, a victim of cancer. In between the two events lived dreams of sailing off into faraway sunsets, of growing old together…
For the record, the members of Death Takes a Holiday don’t worship the devil, though you might be confused if you’ve only caught one of the group’s frenetic live performances. Onstage, the band rocks with a ferocity that would make Lucifer beam and bang his head. The band pumps out…
The army on the tiny Chez Nous dance floor is a microcosm of the Valley’s population, of ethnicity, age, size and gender. White, black, brown, smart, stupid, silly, happy, drunk. There are slinky strippers with moneyed suitors. There are divorcée moms going out. Cocksure gents work every angle. Snow-haired couples…
In the spring of 1962, Memphis producer Sam Phillips, ever the iconoclast, did something he hadn’t attempted in nearly a decade: He recorded a set of raw blues, the kind of stuff that boomed from the juke joints and roadhouses that dotted the flat, desolate landscape of north Mississippi. Phillips,…
Mick Taylor sighs. “I almost regret calling it that,” he says wearily of his recent album, A Stone’s Throw, due for stateside release this month. The album, in the works for most of the late ’90s, was at one time named for its lead track, “Secret Affair.” Cooler marketing heads…
Trip hoppers and drum ‘n’ bass DJs routinely give props to hip-hop for the blueprint of their samples and beats. Rarely is such credit offered mutually, even though drum ‘n’ bass’ staccato beats underpin nearly everything found in the oveures of Timbaland, Missy Elliott or the Neptunes. Which is one…
Time for a Jimi Hendrix moment. Imagine, for just a minute, that you’re shuffling around on a Manhattan sidewalk outside the Fillmore East one late December 1969 afternoon. Longhaired, pock-faced roadies have been rolling gear into the legendary venue for a couple of hours, and you notice that a pair…
After listening to Sarah Cracknell’s solo debut, four out of five dentists will surely recommend brushing. The St. Etienne vocalist’s voice is sticky sweet and fluffier than marshmallow cream — perfectly suited to the emaciated synth-pop lite of her band and Lipslide. Released in the U.K. in 1996 and reissued…
Yes, Bernard Butler was once the guitarist for Brit-pop phenomenon Suede. But he’s quick to point out that his quantity of work post-Suede is now larger than his output as a member. For Butler it’s an irritating association, like constantly being reminded of who you were in high school. He…
In Kool Keith Thornton’s world, the traditional rap skit often takes a turn toward the disturbing, but not via hoochie-mama sex scenes or gangsta violence (to which rap fans, of course, have become accustomed and inured). No, Keith’s raps involve dramatic elements such as a quiet scene in which he…
Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, it was easy, no, make that compulsory, to laugh at the British music scene. The American indie explosion had given rock the bitch slap of life it desperately needed while England was still determined to construct the next New Kids on the…
Over breakfast of an English muffin and Diet Coke (and in a voice much lower than his singing falsetto), Green Gartside, the man who will always be Scritti Politti, tries to explain himself. Gartside grew disillusioned after Scritti Politti found pop success in the ’80s and quickly walked away. Trying…
There are, of course, the great intro riffs: Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” Led Zep’s “Whole Lotta Love,” B.O.C.’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl,” etc. Oft copped, rarely topped. Instinctively grasping this, Fu Manchu still manages to elbow some room with a brand of high-octane, hard-pounding psychedelia that’s instantly…
This probably seemed like a good idea back in the old days, when the world gave a steaming crap about Oasis: Bros Noel and Liam Gallagher would assemble and bookend a tribute to their rave fave that isn’t spelled B-E-A-T-L-E-S, then release it a month before their own long-awaited third…
