Music

Remarkably lovely U.K. trio The Clientele, whose sound primarily falls somewhere between the bright psych-pop of late-’60s Britain and the lush jangle-chime of L.A.’s ’80s Paisley Underground scene, pulls off the rare, swell trick of reminding you of literally dozens of artists — the late Arthur Lee, Dream Syndicate, Mercury…

Pity the poor music journalist charged with the task of describing the enticingly exotic and eccentric music created by DeVotchKa. Over its six years of existence, scribes and screed-slingers (including this one) have used a plethora of hyphen-laced phrases to describe the Denver foursome’s strangely sumptuous sound, including such idioms…

If Gary Numan had to be remembered as a one-hit wonder, well, at least he gets to be remembered as the one who gave the world “Cars,” a paranoid portrait in icy detachment that finds him alone in his car and enjoying it not because he’s doing something twisted like…

Had they been around in the 1800s, Austin-based band Asylum Street Spankers would have been traveling the country in a caravan like a giant band of Gypsies, unloading a plethora of instruments — drums, guitars, standup bass, fiddles, washboards, harmonicas, banjos, ukuleles, Dobros — and rocking every stop with equal…

Sunday afternoons are meant to be spent maxing and relaxing, instead of stressing out about returning to your hellish job for another week of rat-race-style torture. So it’s a good thing that Counter Culture Cafe, 2330 East McDowell Road, has its weekly event HeadSpace, at which you can kick back…

Maybe it was his non-fro or lack of a hyphenated name, but Jon Theodore, longtime drummer for Latin prog rock act The Mars Volta, has left the band. Now, the earthy surnamed and mop-topped shadows of singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala, guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and bassist Pablo Hinojos-Gonzalez will fall upon new…

If every dark cloud has a silver lining, then the bright side of the imminent closure of legendary NYC club CBGB is chrome-studded rather than silver. When renowned and long-defunct straight-edge pioneers Gorilla Biscuits threw a one-off reunion to try to keep the ailing club’s doors open, they had such…

Back when rock was a real arena monster, fans used to hold up lighters at rock shows. At shows by local pop punk/hard rock band A Change of Pace, fans hold up their illuminated cell phones. That gesture’s a great metaphor for ACoP’s music — it’s an old sound, punched…

Here’s the problem with riding the ass-end of a wave where everything old is new again: The tide eventually comes in, and what was previously a tight refurbishment seems like trite regurgitation. Take London-based synth-pop rockers Boy Kill Boy — the band has a spacy ’80s sound reminiscent of Simple…

Several undiscovered classics down the road from Geek the Girl, it’s becoming increasingly clear that poor Lisa Germano is doomed to be remembered, if at all, as the chick who played fiddle for John Cougar Mellencamp. But maybe that’s what drives her to create such dark, unsettling pop. While arguably…

The first great tragedy of Sublime was the fatal heroin overdose of singer/guitarist Brad Nowell in 1996. The second great tragedy is the ongoing release of compilations that contain any smidgeon of Sublime — demos, outtakes, bootlegs, live versions, remixes — regardless of how rehashed or half-assed. Not that this…

Poor Ben Harper. No matter where he goes, no matter what new songs he brings, he always gets slapped with either the “poor man’s Lenny Kravitz” or the “thinking man’s Lenny Kravitz” tag (depending on the graciousness of the critic). Of course, that’s probably what Harper deserves for so similarly…

Once upon a time, you had to go to New Orleans to see many of the Crescent City’s jazz fusion bands. Then, a big hurricane named Katrina destroyed the city, and the Big Easy’s bands were forced to embark on fund-raising tours ever after. Such is the case with E.O.E…

There comes a time in every band’s career when an overwhelming sense of fear and dread of failure begins to creep in, especially for groups that have the fortune to make a big splash right out of the starting gate and then face the daunting task of a follow-up. But…