“Yeah, I jumped off a cliff, but let’s talk about something else,” Elliott Smith told me in 1997. It was shortly after the release of his breakthrough album on Kill Rock Stars, Either/Or, and Smith had recently attempted suicide by throwing himself off a cliff, suffering only minor injuries. Long…
Hip-hop loves Scarface, the Al Pacino flick that just turned 20. Over time, the movie, about a self-made Cuban immigrant drug kingpin, has become part of gangsta rap’s DNA. Scarface’s morally repugnant rags-to-riches narrative, explicit detail about the drug trade and its sense of paranoia, blood lust and greed make…
Oh, Inverted World, the sly, tender 2001 debut by Albuquerque’s The Shins, fairly upended my historically indie-rocking world. Blame it on a stint at college radio, or two-sedan basement tours through the heartland, or too many damn Guided by Voices records, but shaggy-guys-with-guitars had all but ossified into hollow shtick…
Printed in teeny, tiny lettering on the back of challenging Franco-Anglo ensemble Stereolab’s new EP Instant O in the Universe are the words “Mary, thinking about you.” Last December, Stereolab’s billow-voiced vocalist and keyboardist Mary Hansen died in a bike-riding accident. Although her death was tragic, it did have some…
For the past 15 years, Barenaked Ladies have been considered the court jesters of pop. The members of the Canadian quintet have made a living using their quirky sense of humor, singing and rapping about an odd collection of topics — “alternative girlfriend,” wasabi, Brian Wilson, the joys of having…
If anyone alive could bring legitimacy to the sound of your average nightclub, it’s progressive house mainstay Paul Van Dyk. Though the German producer has frequently and publicly repudiated the term, his work helped validate trance music with an accessible pop sensibility that marries ethereal, minor-key melodies with DJ-friendly tempos…
Major labels must have been dozing in class the day their teachers covered the wisdom of philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” How else to explain nü metal, which amounted to little more than the mutated hellspawn of late-’80s hair bands? Or…
Alex Gonzalez has a lot to say. The prodigious drummer for gigantic Mexican rock band Maná has every right to be jaded. Been there, done that — he could be talking shit about other Latin rock bands, the haters. But instead, he calls from a tour bus to talk about…
In the beginning, there was rhythm. Hairy hominids banging bones. Then, pokey Neanderthals touched the monolith and discovered the handclap — they grunted with glee — then konked on a coconut, thumped on a stump. “Mmm. Good . . . beat. Dance . . . to . . . it.”…
Stupidity can’t really be called a cultural offense anymore, especially in pop music, where seemingly every successful act now can be evaluated in degrees of dumb. Eminem? The king of dumb — white trash as satirical commentary. Hilary Duff? Too dumb to write her own songs. Those annoying smiley guys…
Calling punk an attitude has become an MTV-generation cliché. It’s used as a post-mortem tribute to a musician’s rebelliousness: Johnny Cash, yo, that guy was punk. But there’s more resonance, now, in punk as an attitude than in its descriptiveness of a sound or a scene — if you accept…
A voice made of crumpled paper, guitar straight from Highway 61, tempo that wavers like the consciousness of porch-sitting bluesman: “The Muss of Paradise” sounds like many of the songs Tucson’s Howe Gelb has done with Giant Sand and other bands. And then, the song, by Gleb’s freewheeling vernacular-music collective…
Americana is real big with the underground right now — the deep underground, a mini-movement The Wire magazine dubbed the “New Weird America.” A loose confederation of noise-rock refugees and various other beatniks deeply suspicious of technology and progress, the New Weird America bands are all about “freedom” — freedom…
Don’t look for any glossy dental work on Heartworn Highways. No rounded biceps. No Venetian Blind-like abs. These days, such equipment is as vital to up-‘n’-comin’ country stars as big hats, but such trappings are refreshingly absent in this raw and riveting look back to Nashville music circa 1975. Just…
It may be no coincidence that Summer Hymns chose Clemency as the title for its latest album. While most people associate the word these days with a governor’s mercy toward death row inmates, this Athens, Georgia alt-country band clearly prefers the alternate meaning: mildness. The 14 songs on the album,…
Bands are usually one thing or another. They either rock out with roaring guitars, beguile you with catchy melodies or awe you with the majesty of rich, soaring arrangements. Heavenly States is rare in that they’re capable of all three. The San Francisco quartet’s self-titled debut is assured and well…
No doubt you’ve gotten on with your life since 1991, but we here at the Muso Band Institute have been torturing ourselves for more than a decade with one persistent, nagging question — “Is Primus a muso band?” Year after excruciating year of listening to slap happy bassists thwack a…
The Mason Jar is a metal club. Can’t deny it. The Phoenix institution was a metal club when it opened 25 years ago. It really became one under the ownership of Franco Gagliano, a gregarious Italian immigrant whose booking turned the Jar into Spandex central in the ’80s and early…
Once you’re nearing your fourth decade as a recording artist, your audience has every reason to expect you will never again make an album that hits the ball out of the park 13 out of 13 times. Hell, they’ll be happy if you lumber around the bases even once like…
Prior to 2003, Death Cab for Cutie were merely one more articulate bunch of emo kids. One glimpse of their alabaster pigmentation told the story: Sensitive, brokenhearted, anxious, awkward and only occasionally compelling. Disappointments? Abandonment issues? Frontman Ben Gibbard had plenty of both. Learning how to make these gripes worth…
Sticking The Bled with the “hardcore” tag seems unfair. Pass the Flask, the young Tucson quintet’s 10-song, 38-minute full-length debut, is a much more ambitious undertaking than most of the so-called “screamo” records that have flooded the punk market over the past year. “A lot of the times in hardcore,…
Hip-hop progresses deep into the 21st century with the arrival of Quannum Projects producer Lyrics Born’s debut album Later That Day, an imaginative, future-looking, ass-quaking work of art. From the crew (once called Soulsides, now Quannum Projects) that first came together on the university campus in Davis, California, in the…
