Tim Armstrong (Op Ivy, Rancid) must love these guys. Suicide Machines alternates between ska and breakneck-paced old-school punk rock, and it’s a testament to the band’s skills that it brings off both better than most of its more single-minded peers. The Detroit quintet formed in the early ’90s, and its…
1. Sufjan Stevens, Illinois (Asthmatic Kitty) 2. All-American Rejects, Move Along (Interscope) 3. Coldplay, X&Y (Capitol) 4. Felt, Felt Vol. 2: A Tribute to Lisa Bonet (Rhymesayers) 5. Gorillaz, Demon Days (Virgin) 6. Jack Johnson, G. Love, Donovan Frankenreiter, Some Live Songs EP (Universal) 7. Röyksopp, The Understanding (Astralwerks) 8…
If the Pernice Brothers’ newest full-length, Discover a Lovelier You, sounds just a little more optimistic than earlier releases, it’s an unintended nuance. Singer-songwriter Joe Pernice really doesn’t see it as a radical departure from 2003’s Yours, Mine and Ours, although the press has called it everything from his poppiest…
Two lyrical heroes of indie hip-hop team up to pay tribute to everyone’s favorite Cosby Show castoff, Lisa Bonet. Well, actually, Slug and Murs’ sweet memories of Denise Huxtable play only a minor role in the duo’s stories about the opposite sex. Felt Vol. 2 pops off with the picked…
Brooklyn rhymer Kenyatta “Buckshot” Blake is one of many shoulda-been-huge MCs who suffered when hip-hop became a blinger’s game. However, despite legal battles, label struggles, and plain bad luck (Tupac was a fan, but died before he could get Buckshot’s career into overdrive), the Black Moon leader hasn’t given up…
Röyksopp’s debut disc, Melody A.M., produced mood-setting mix-tape fodder and soundtracked any room at a rave that came with a couch. The Understanding starts in the same vein, with parochial piano and a gentle percussive pulse, but then it turns the beat around, disco-style. Bop-gun bloops, vocoder murmurs, quick-click drums,…
Few may have noticed, but history of sorts was made this past March with the release of Now That’s What I Call Music! Volume 18. For the first time since Now! Volume 3’s triple bang opener of Smash Mouth, Lenny Kravitz, and blink-182 last millennium, an installment of this best-selling…
The Michigan songwriter has promised to write a song for every state, and while that may sound ambitious, with his talent, don’t doubt the possibility. He certainly isn’t going anywhere. Stevens is a nimble songwriter heavily influenced by early ’70s pop melodicism, but while he can go in for a…
Head Automatica is the brainchild of Daryl Palumbo — you probably know him as “that guy from Glassjaw.” He may have started out screaming for a rap-metal band, but he says he always wanted to make party music. So he picked the perfect partner in Dan “The Automator” Nakamura, a…
Pit er Pat is like a Long Island iced tea — what sounds like a nasty concoction actually turns out to be pretty good. And ends up messing with your head. One part Alkaline Trio, one part Neutral Milk Hotel (speaking of) and, figuratively, one part Blonde Redhead, the members…
While Jason Hill’s leering-stalker routine may be a truer reflection of male sexuality than the typical smooth playboy act, that doesn’t mean it makes for satisfying rock ‘n’ roll. Even the Louis XIV singer’s most obvious influence, T. Rex’s Marc Bolan, was not just some solitary rake, but the toastmaster…
The members of Ozomatli are a product of their environment. Like their Los Angeles home, their music’s a melting pot of foreign and indigenous sounds. Reggae, salsa, funk, hip-hop, jazz and Latin music all show up in the bustling gumbo of styles. With so many influences flowing in and out,…
Glass Candy is a conundrum, something sweet surrounding something dangerous. Ida No is one of punk’s most captivating front women: ferocious, whispering, screeching and wailing herself into a barefoot tizzy. Taking cues from ’70s punk, glam and disco, Johnny Jewel keeps the music minimal, focusing on driving the songs forward…
Because Los Angeles is a music-industry center, a lot of artists from the area devote themselves to conformity — yet for some strange, unexplained reason, SoCal’s underground hip-hop scene remains a bastion of originality. The Shape Shifters epitomize this contradiction. Featuring mouthpieces Akuma, AWOL One, Circus, Die, Existereo, Life Rexall,…
Thursday 28Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness: DJ Suzy (hip-hop, dance) Anderson’s Fifth Estate: Area 51 with AKA (gothic, industrial) Axis/Radius: Axis Idol (dance) AZ 88: DJ P-Body (jazz fusion, funk) Barcelona: DJ Rob (dance) Dos Gringos — Scottsdale: DJ Sterling (all genres) Draft House: DJ Dave outta NYC (hip-hop) E-Lounge: DJ Domenica…
1. Felt, Felt, Vol. 2: A Tribute to Lisa Bonet (Rhymesayers) 2. Manic Hispanic, Grupo Sexo (BYO Records) 3. 3 Melancholy Gypsies, Grand Caravan to the Rim of the World (Legendary Music) 4. The Regulations, The Regulations (Havoc) 5. Look Back and Laugh, Look Back and Laugh (Lengua Armada) 6…
“You want road stories?” says Alfie Lucero, lead singer and bass player in the six-year-old Phoenix rock band Redfield, sharing some after-work drinks with the rest of the quartet at the George & Dragon pub on South 48th Street. “Oh, man! Where do we begin?” Mike Sandoval, the big, hulking…
You don’t ordinarily expect to find a young white woman from San Francisco digging deep into the heart of Crunk Country. But Tamara Palmer did just that in the course of researching her new book, Country Fried Soul: Adventures in Dirty South Hip-Hop, which includes interviews with such playas, impresarios,…
Like the comforting inevitability of nature’s cycles, Fruit Bats’ Eric Johnson returns every two years with more woodsy acoustic numbers that crawl out of the underbrush to feel the warmth of the sun. Spelled in Bones continues to revel in pastoral delights, but Johnson gives the new album a little…
Considering that son simply means “song,” one can imagine a wide definition. Indeed, this homegrown Cuban music developed from numerous styles more than a century ago, though most featured the defining tres (a guitar with three sets of equally tuned strings). If that instrument is the definitive sound, Sierra Maestra…
For the past 10 years, Bob Mould has been busy battling tinnitus, paying the bills by writing TV scripts for professional wrestling (!), and indulging a newfound passion for club music. With Body of Song, he returns from the wilderness to hard, passionate pop-rock — though he’s blissfully indifferent to…
There’s a never-ending supply of the young, loud and snotty picking through the rock trash heap, but the legions of glam punk godfathers are few. While many of his peers lived fast and died young — or simply settled into comfortable obscurity — singer and guitarist Jeff Dahl has maintained…
