You’d think Lee Burik, guitarist and co-founder of the San Francisco quintet evening, would have already gotten his fill of meeting people. Not only is he in a buzz band on the cusp of national recognition — which brings around the requisite fans, friends, friends of friends, groupies, hangers-on, stalkers,…
My job just got infinitely more difficult. See, I just got word that Freedom, the dance-music mecca in Tempe, is closing its doors at the end of May. This is a pain in my ass because I write a little feature called “Needle Exchange” spotlighting a different DJ/turntablist performance every…
The electroclash scene isn’t dead yet. Or if it is, then nobody told Felix da Housecat. Once a Chicago house DJ who was huge in Europe and barely noticed in the States, Felix arrived in 2002 with one of nouveau synth-pop’s finest platters, Kittenz and Thee Glitz. And his latest…
Ben Kweller could be America’s answer to Australia’s Ben Lee, who, like Kweller, made news in the ’90s with his teen band (Noise Addict as opposed to Kweller’s Silverchair clone, Radish). He also has a cute, moppish look, and purveys a gentle, slightly goofy, lovelorn lyricism. Except nobody knows who…
As morose and hopeless as ever, indie-rock Jesus-follower David Bazan (the key songwriter and only permanent member of Pedro the Lion) has crafted another stunning, despondent record with Achilles’ Heel. Fairly unique among indie and emo whiners, Bazan is a devout Christian. But rather than preach a clean lifestyle or…
Quannum Projects (originally called Solesides) is like the Paul Masson of hip-hop collectives (“We’ll sell no beats and rhymes before their time”). Fans of the esteemed Bay Area crew know that many moons may pass before its charter members turn out new music: Lyrics Born’s recent Later That Day …
Nobody ever said you’ll get Tempe fans handed to you on a silver platter. That’s what Emily Haines, the keyboard-playing front woman for the indie pop band Metric, found out when her group headlined the annual New Times Music Showcase on Sunday, April 18. Metric’s catchy CD came out last…
The long-vacant, two-story building at 750 Grand Avenue is a former car showroom, and there are rumors it was once owned by Bing Crosby. Now it’s open for business again, but not for auto sales. Instead, the site is home to the new Paper Heart, a multipurpose art and music…
Deerhoof seems to have found relative cohesion on Milk Man, something like the difference between a murky, half-remembered dream and a lucid one. The album makes good on the promise audible but not realized on last year’s Apple O’. Where Apple O’ was experimentally indulgent, Milk Man hangs together as…
I saw an anomaly at a Phoenix hip-hop show recently — a 58-year-old guy onstage playing classic funk 45s — no scratching, no mixing, just one song after another. Two twentysomething DJs, ChaseOne and Smite, stood by John Dixon, better known as Johnny D, nodding to the beat and looking…
Madlib’s Madvillain project is the second of his dream match-ups, following his slightly disappointing pairing last year with Detroit iconoclast Jay Dee (Jaylib’s Champion Sound). While Jay Dee favors original compositions, track-busting Madlib finds more in common with MF Doom, since the latter’s early-’90s work with KMD as Zevlove X…
BR549’s energetic synthesis of Buck Owens and Ernest Tubb started packing ’em in during pass-the-hat gigs at Robert’s Western Wear — a Nashville haberdashery on the wrong side of the tracks — in early 1996. When the band’s self-produced EP Live at Robert’s juiced up the buzz to a deafening…
For a while there, it seemed like Britain’s Squarepusher, a.k.a. Tom Jenkinson, would never show his face around these parts. One full-scale U.S. tour was aborted shortly after its launch, and another was scrapped entirely, all for unspecified reasons. It only added to Jenkinson’s long-standing reputation as a mad IDM/drill…
Ten songs into what was supposed to be a nine-song set, on a lawn between two of Arizona State University’s freshman dorms, Greeley Estates singer Ryan Zimmerman is obviously spent. He keeps spitting behind the PA, trying to clear his throat to finish screaming the lyrics to “Not Alone,” the…
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When I was 17, I worked at a skateboard shop in Anchorage, Alaska, called G&B, the first skate shop in the state. Growing up in Alaska doesn’t afford one much exposure to underground music — you have to dig for it. Luckily, beneath the glass front counter at G&B, there…
Singer/guitarist Karie Jacobson and drummer Drew Kowalski of the Dagons were a duo way before this current trend of rock minimalism became all the rage. And forget about the candy-coated innocence of faux siblings Jack and Meg. Comparing the White Stripes to the Dagons is like comparing the Osmonds to…
“God bless this mess,” Khadijah Anwar proclaims at the top of Slicker’s We All Have a Plan, the third album by Chicagoan John Hughes III, a dude possibly better known for his ownership of Hefty Records (home of Telefon Tel Aviv and Prefuse 73 offshoot Savath & Savalas) than for…
Lauded producer Kanye West has a king-size chip on his shoulder about being passed over so many times as an MC. But with the breakout success of The College Dropout’s first two singles (“Through the Wire” and “Slow Jamz”), it’s a safe bet the chip has been whittled down to…
The two albums sturdily bearded Floridian film professor Sam Beam has released as Iron & Wine — 2002’s The Creek Drank the Cradle and the new Our Endless Numbered Days — are the kind perfect for putting on when you’ve just performed some sacred ancient ritual in the woods and…
First, the bad news: This package tour from New York hip-hop superindie Definitive Jux could use a couple higher-profile names than it currently boasts. At a hometown launch last month, label star Aesop Rock put in a breathtaking appearance at the end of a marathon show; though his rapping was…
Ben Funke’s the overachieving, gifted kid you’ve always hated and wished you were. At 18, he’s the driving force behind the electro synth-pop trio XOXOXO, touring the West Coast in style, and getting paid to play gigs he’s booking himself. His band tours in a shiny new 2004 Honda Element,…
