Music

American Music: The Hightone Records Story boxed set (Hightone Records) is extremely likable in concept. The imprint is a hardworking indie out of Oakland that has spent the past 20 years documenting modern roots music. In fact, Hightone has released records by some of the last great bluesmen, including R.L…

Drunk on Tuesday Yeah, Wednesday, but nonetheless, I’ve got a couple of songs from the punk rock quartet Drunk on Tuesday for you. These Phoenician ne’er-do-wells are preparing a full length for your listening pleasure, busting out with some classic/basic West Coast p-rock in your face. Whatever that means. I…

Who Jesus? Ask Willie…. Ordinarily I’m a pretty blasphemous motherfucker; Jesus and I haven’t had much of a rapport since I was in short pants. But, like an early Christmas miracle, I got a little bit of the Lord up in my hot little hands recently that, although its unlikely…

Fat Rhabit Last month Casey Lynch reviewed Fat Rhabit’s self-titled debut EP, giving the local rockers a pretty glowing assessment. Just this morning, the band’s manager Sean Shepherd sent over a couple new tunes from the Rhabit’s upcoming full-length “rock opera-ish” album, due out around March. The Grand Rapids transplants…

Army of Robots Last week I dropped a couple of new demo tracks from Army of Robots for your listening pleasure; after a debauched drinking marathon this weekend, frontman Daggrr hit me off with one more new track for you. “Fabulous” is about picking up a girl (who ends up…

Still Alive Speaking of trite, I really couldn’t come up with a better title for this blog post; you’d think I’d have learned more Espanol in my eleven years in Arizona… but I digress. I just got my hands on the latest release by Still Alive, a reggaeton group from…

Sonny Long Once in a while we music critics get lucky and an especially stinky CD ends up in our hands… an easy target, something genuinely bad. I scored that recently, when I got my hands on some tracks by PHX rapper/R&B-er Sonny Long, whose debut album The Resume is…

Dave Wade Is a freebie… the Dave Wade Trio playing at Trax (the former Sail Inn) this evening. Along with guitarist extraordinaire Charles Bond and drummer J.B., Wade takes every style he can think of and jumbles them all together, be it jazz, reggae, blues, Middle Eastern music, or straight…

Cute Lil’ DJs (My Friend Andy in foreground) Over the last month or so I’ve spent some time watching and listening as DJ My Friend Andy, formerly half of the Cute Lil’ DJs (along with DJ Stefascope), worked on a remix album of Modest Mouse songs – mostly kind of…

There’s a shitload going down tonight at joints around the Valley, including the AZPunk compilation release party at the Sets. If you’re not making it down to that, here’s a couple of other options to sate your thirst for the live music thing. Heather Rae and Shannon of the Moonshine…

Army of Robots Way back in February of 2005, I wrote a column saying that Army of Robots had succeeded Tucson’s The Bled as the best band in Arizona (in my opinion, of course), and that they’d “fucked up the whole paradigm and established a new gold standard for Arizona.”…

Saki Photography Violet Wild A while back I wrote a column about Violet Wild, the band put together from remnants of the Black Moods (guitarist Josh Kennedy) and Mink Rebellion (singer Bobby Scott). Along with bassist Paul Fenix and drummer Joey Schwegler, the boys were working on an album that’s…

“Know any banjo jokes?” my roommate asks me when I tell him I’m going to see local bluegrass purveyors The Breadwinners on a recent Tuesday night. I don’t, but my roomie does. “What’s the difference between a banjo and a vacuum cleaner? A vacuum cleaner has to be plugged in…

It’s the Fourth of July at Cricket Pavilion, and kids wearing tee shirts that pledge their allegiance to every band from Anti-Flag to Less Than Jake are pressed against a makeshift stage at this year’s local Warped Tour stop to see a star their parents may, in fact, have pressed…

As you read this, the National Security Agency has probably been monitoring your phone calls, while the Department of Homeland Security peruses your e-mail, and agents from the Central Intelligence Agency torture detainees in the War on Terror. A decade ago, long before 9/11, terrifyingly Orwellian-style occurrences such as these…

Glenn Weyant’s The Anta Project — a single, 54-minute track created by playing the steel walls and barbed-wire fences along the U.S.-Mexico border using a cello bow and modified chopsticks — puts a musical face on illegal immigration under the guise of creative improvisation. Where mere mention of the hot-button…

The Harry Smith Project: Anthology of American Folk Music Revisited (Shout Factory) is an all-star, boxed-set tribute to artist and folk music anthologist Harry Smith, whose 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music helped set off the folk music revival of the next two decades. This four-disc set captures more than…