Music

Lonely days in Phoenix lead to lonely springtime in the desert. Everything is blooming and fornicating, humping, discharging, and collecting all the time, leaving you standing there waiting for that bee. The young dance in the light, on the lawns at spring training games, on small balconies, in backyards by…

The kid with the fluorescent green hair can’t be much older than 8. He’s wearing a shirt with a design that resembles the Heineken logo, but is modified to proclaim his love of Anal Blast, the band that’s just pulled him onstage. Singer Don Decker asks the kid, “What’s the…

For decades, critics have been leveling such denunciations as arch, portentous, heavy-handed, and precious at rock music. Destroyer’s Dan Bejar has managed to turn those denunciations into attributes. His vocals feature mannerisms that we’d usually find annoying in our U.K. cousins: feyness, enthusiastic offhandedness, melodramatics, self-importance, and smugness. (Think: Bowie,…

If pre-electric Bob Dylan knocked up the Carter family and the offspring that followed were the ringleaders of a band of rebel Irish immigrant poets who lived in the Catskills and survived on red wine and petty theft, then you might be getting close to summarizing the nearly indefinable Felice…

When we last heard from the Bs, their future seemed uncertain. Cindy Wilson had left the band, and though the remaining trio’s Good Stuff album of 1992 wasn’t bad, it didn’t set off any sparks, either. Then Wilson rejoined the band to tour behind a greatest hits compilation and they…

Three years after dissolving Rocket from the Crypt and Hot Snakes nearly simultaneously, John “Speedo” Reis is back in the fold with a formidable new San Diego-based quartet called The Night Marchers. On the band’s debut CD, See You in Magic (released this week on Vagrant Records), Reis — collaborating…

Though twins Tegan and Sara Quinn grew up on punk, they’ve demonstrably honed their pop instincts and graduated from folk-tinged New Wave/pop-punk to something more sophisticated over the course of their four albums. Last year’s The Con consolidates the gains made on 2004’s critical breakthrough, So Jealous, with crafted, well-polished…

After more than 30 years of recording and touring, you’d think that these gentlemen would be jaded about making music, but listening to them perform, you realize that nothing could be further from the truth. The iconic group — often regarded by fans as “the Led Zeppelin of jazz” —…

At most DJ and dance nights going down around the Valley, chances are you’ll be shaking your moneymaker to the same genres of music week after endless week. That ain’t the case on Friday nights at Medizona, 4240 North Winfield Scott Plaza in Scottsdale, thanks to the efforts of the…

This 1987 album is widely regarded as the best album in the long discography of Napalm Death, a band that basically invented grindcore, combining elements of speed metal (barreling, crushing guitars) and death metal (growling, shrieking vocals) with blast beats. There are 28 tracks here, most of which clock in…

Handlebar J in Scottsdale on Saturday, April 19th By: Lilia Menconi For more cowboy-girl action click here. Lately, we’ve been feeling like this town is tapped out. Every weekend, it’s the same faces, same get-ups, and same mornings of scattered memories and regrets. So we wallowed in our boredom by…