David Lamb and MorganEve Swain — the duo that makes up indie band Brown Bird — made a left turn last month with the release of Fits of Reason. The electric guitar that joins their metal, rock, and even Middle Eastern influences isn’t the only surprise on the band’s latest…
Just because a former hardcore punker turned surf instructor decides to dump the angst for acoustic guitars, it doesn’t instantly make him a Jack Johnson shuffle artist. (And the world needs another Jack Johnson like I need a hole in my head.) Fronted by Andrew Heilprin, a surf instructor by…
San Francisco’s Callow makes music for standing alone in a hallway after somebody important to you has just let you know they don’t feel anything you’re feeling. It’s not that it’s sad or self-indulgent (the way we want to be in those moments); it’s that nothing in these songs insists…
Christianity wants to change your life and make you feel born again, and rock ‘n’ roll wants to change your life and make you feel born again. Contemporary Christian Music, then — that’s the genre’s full name in the trade papers — isn’t quite so strange a chimera as it…
Taylor Swift has always devoted herself to her fans. Now she has a brand-spanking-new website that allows you to break up with her, perhaps to inspire her next greatest hit! Just point your browser to BreakUpWithTaylorSwift.com, write yourself a tear-jerking Dear John letter, and push play! Wait. Let me redact…
Listen up, local party monsters and EDM fans. We’re about to dispense some sage advice. There are a few things you’ll definitely need before going wild out at the massive outdoor dance fiesta and electronica rager known as Dirty Disco this weekend. First, make sure to sport a colorful and…
Is it an ominous sign when a band’s first gig is broken up and shut down? For Sundressed, it clearly was inspiration. When the Phoenix quartet’s first performance ended before it began, they went into the studio to record a self-titled EP. Their first official full-length, Whiskey with Milk, is…
It’s been a little more than a year and a half since Crescent Ballroom opened, and about nine months since the downtown Phoenix venue celebrated its first anniversary a little early with the first Los Dias de la Crescent. The second Los Dias de la Crescent is Friday and Saturday…
Thursday 16 Afterlife: Touch Thursdays with DJ Tsunami, DJ Michael Ryan, & DJ Matt Fox (Top 40, EDM) AZ/88: Black Out Thursdays with Josh 1 (soulful house, lounge) Barney’s Boathouse: Thirsty Thursdays with DJ Pulse (Top 40, rock) Bikini Lounge: DJ Shane Kennedy (juke joint, R&B, French pop) Bobby Q’s:…
Begin applying your facepaint now, just for the practice: Insane Clown Posse is coming to Flagstaff on June 2. They’ll be playing the Pepsi Amphitheater, and they promise that “even the most diehard, longest, longtime Juggalos who’ve seen ICP 100 times will be schooled.” Why will they be schooled? I’m…
I don’t come by country music fandom naturally; people who do tell me that there are many reasons to enjoy the music of Miranda Lambert. But the most accessible route to Miranda Lambert appreciation ahead of Thursday’s concert at Desert Sky Pavilion, so far as I can tell, is through…
My Bloody Valentine is headlining — of course you should buy FYF Fest tickets; this is a no brainer. Okay, the decision isn’t necessarily that simple. Backing up: FYF Fest is a two-day festival that takes place in downtown Los Angeles, featuring a variety of indie, electronic, punk, and comedy…
Earlier in May, Justin Timberlake announced he would be coming through Phoenix on his enormous solo tour, which set off a concert-excitement bomb the likes of which hadn’t been seen since — well, since those Prince shows, I guess, even earlier in May. More recently, the Backstreet Boys announced they’d…
Vampire Weekend — the album — sounded a lot like Graceland, inasmuch as most of us hadn’t heard that bright Afropop guitar tone on any other albums in the intervening 20 years, and Ezra Koenig’s lyrics were as epigrammatic as Paul Simon’s, if in a different way. It wasn’t just…
Do not cross Miranda Lambert. You can go see her perform on Thursday at Desert Sky Pavilion, and you can listen to her music, you can probably even say you’re a big fan, and you can go buy a T-shirt. But crossing her does not seem to be a good…
“Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?” asks Lana Del Rey in the chorus of her latest song, “Young and Beautiful” — the first single from The Great Gatsby’s soundtrack. Del Rey teamed up with the film’s director, cowriter, and co-producer, Baz Luhrmann, to bring…
[The Valley is a big place, and it puts out more interesting music than we could ever hope to cover. Every week or so, Mike Bogumill will use this space to cover a little more of it. – Ed.] The goal of this column is to document, explore, and create…
Welcome to Ask Willie D, where the Geto Boys MC answers reader questions about matters, in his own words, “funny, serious or unpredictable.” Something on your mind? Ask Willie D! Photo courtesy of Peter BesteBURNED BY THE RELATIVE I LOANED MONEY Dear Willie D: I loaned my cousin $500 more…
I have never once been so confused by a song as I was the first time someone told me to listen to “Stick Stickly,” by Attack Attack! All I’d been told was that it was the source of the animated GIFs I’d started seeing all over the internet, in which…
Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman died of cirrhosis on May 2, the same day as the Golden Gods Awards. It was devastating that on a day meant to celebrate the lives of the best musicians in metal, one of those artists was taken from the world of music. It also came…
Had Baz Luhrmann decided to take things even remotely seriously in his adaptation of The Great Gatsby, he could’ve just used the Bryan Ferry Orchestra’s 2012 album The Jazz Age in its entirety, instead of merely inviting Ferry to supply two incongruous songs for its soundtrack. But nothing about Luhrmann’s…
Arrested Development ruined the Segway. Lots of things ruined the Segway — don’t get me wrong — but the first time Gob Bluth made his dramatic, perfectly self-confident entrance into the frame on his fanny-packed Segway, he instantly summed up all the worries people had about them. Will this make…
