Music

In a previous incarnation, Robinella and her husband, multi-instrumentalist and arranger Cruz Contreras, cut Robinella & the CC Band, an album that blended the swing of Bob Wills and Duke Ellington, with a side of Bill Monroe. Solace is less eclectic and more focused, living up to its name with…

1. Yellowcard, Lights and Sounds (Capitol) 2. Cat Power, The Greatest (Matador Records) 3. The Strokes, First Impressions of Earth (RCA) 4. Panic! At the Disco, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out (Decaydance) 5. Rocky Votolato, Makers (Barsuk) 6. Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, Rabbit Fur Coat (Team Love…

Saturday night is overrated. More often than not, I find myself having the most fun on a school night. After all these years, there’s still a naughty thrill to going out in the middle of the week. Maybe it’s because there are lower expectations and people loosen up. Maybe folks…

Like the Flaming Lips tripping with the Butthole Surfers and listening to Nick Drake albums, this Brooklyn quartet makes quirky, folk-inflected art rock, similar in mood to that of Devendra Banhart, who also got his start on Michael (The Swans, Angels of Light) Gira’s Young God Records. While many songs…

They’re cute, they’re Canadian, they may or may not be sisters, and if you can get their track “Walking With a Ghost” out of your head, you are stronger than we are. After being discovered by Neil Young and releasing one record that sank like a rock, the ladies abandoned…

To be a musician and hail from New Orleans this year is to have the world’s ear — up to a point. That very same world would probably demand that your group have some kind of universally recognizable blues or R&B packed away in its rowboat and expect that you…

Fans of singer-songwriter Rob Dickinson’s old band The Catherine Wheel should not expect to hear the same spacy, silvery guitars and feedback-filled solos on Dickinson’s new album, Fresh Wine for the Horses. Nor should they expect any visceral ditties like TCW’s “Happy Days” — with its angst-ridden line “Eat my…

The band’s moniker is a reference to the jacket of an old hardback book, and front man Conan Zimmerman is an avid reader of literary legends like Salinger, Hemingway, and Chekhov. It’s no surprise, then, that Dust Jacket’s poetic lyrics stand out like Bob Dylan next to that first, infamous…

Of all the artists that the fan-approved, critically underrated Rhymesayers label has discovered in recent years, Stefon Leron “P.O.S.” Alexander may be the most intriguing. A black punk rocker from Minneapolis, P.O.S. (which stands for “Product of Society,” “Pissed Off Stef,” and many other acronyms) blends together hard rock and…

“Last year’s AZ show was so fucking epic that folks are traveling from far and wide to be there this year!” testifies “eastcoastpete” on Avail’s MySpace page. That includes the hardcore punk icons themselves, who are flying in from their Richmond, Virginia, headquarters on Friday night, playing this special one-off…

Music cognoscenti everywhere will probably agree that 2005 was the year of “New American Weird.” From Sufjan Stevens to Iron & Wine, nu-Americana, folktronica or whatever you call it is fast becoming the new American sound, at least among the mop-top and Puma set. Tempe-based Skybox’s new release, Arco Iris,…

As an underground hip-hop group from Portland, Oregon, Lightheaded wouldn’t be expected to rap about pimping bitches, but this trio’s subject matter is noticeably clean-cut. Wrong Way, its second album and first since 2001’s Pure Thoughts, features songs about trying to be a better husband (“Eye to Eye”), testimonials about…

Ordinarily we wouldn’t encourage anyone to patronize a fraternity-sponsored event, but since all y’all collegiate would-be intellectuals are back clocking hours with the professors, you probably need a chance to cut loose while the semester’s still fresh. The local chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha — the first intercollegiate African-American fraternity,…