Subtle as an amputation, the Residents cut themselves off from pop music’s tumorous body three decades ago and never looked back. Still as prolific as they are self-indulgent, the cadre of one-eyed malcontents — led by Mr. Skull — remains cloaked in deliberate secrecy. And while they proudly anoint themselves…
For the disenchanted boys and girls of early ’80s suburbia, the kind of kids who stepped into adolescence with alienation and dissatisfaction (and a protective layer of superiority) lodged deep in the center of their chests, the Violent Femmes’ Gordon Gano was nothing less than a prophet. Now those kids…
If buzz sold records, Pinmonkey would be riding higher than the Dixie Chicks. Together for less than four years, with just one indie release under its belt, the Nashville-based quartet already has the critics in high soothsayer mode. “This band is a superstar act ready to explode,” raved Music Row…
On March 7, 2001, Valley virtuosos DJ Radar and Raul Yanez pulled off one of Arizona’s few great historical events in music history, the performance of the first movement of their classical composition Concerto for Turntable. On the stage at ASU’s Gammage Auditorium and accompanied by ASU’s symphony orchestra, Radar…
The wail is always there. The songs are plusher now. They don’t demand that you sit on the cold, hard floor. But somewhere, beneath what artists call “craft,” Corin Tucker’s voice conveys the emptiness of pure feeling. That alone is enough to keep Sleater-Kinney fans coming back over and over,…
The hair isn’t quite as big as it was back in the late ’80s, when moussed metal monsters like Jerry Dixon’s band Warrant ruled the airwaves and the concert circuit. “I think we look similar to the way we used to, just a little more hip,” Dixon, 34, insists. “You…
There’s something admirable in Darius Rucker’s mission to prove he’s more than the Dylan of the frat-boy generation. After years as the darker-skinned front man of the otherwise vanilla party band Hootie and the Blowfish, Rucker is branching out. With the release of his solo debut, Back to Then, he’s…
The electronica market is fairly glutted with attempts at Brazilian soul, and almost all of them are as skimpy as an Ipanema bikini. Relying on a scrap of melodics and a thin rhythmic string, these endeavors are usually way too polite to do justice to the exuberant complexity of real…
Ask anyone, of any age, to name the first album she or he purchased, and you can bet the disc mentioned will be cool: a classic that’s truly stood the test of time. And do you know why? Because people lie. Okay, maybe some of them are telling the truth;…
On its 2000 debut, Coldplay sounded like a band that took Radiohead’s “Knives Out” a bit too literally, slicing and dicing that group’s sound to bits, trimming away all the ambition in favor of sheer digestibility. Ironically, it only made Coldplay that much harder to swallow — especially with a…
It’s been four years since Girls Against Boys released Freak*on*ica, a weird hardwiring of indie-punk abrasion and big-budget techno. While that album polarized the band’s fan base, its new release, You Can’t Fight What You Can’t See, returns GvsB to the post-Killing Joke/Scratch Acid school from which it was graduated…
You’re always told to be nice to the people you meet on the way up, but you can’t expect the same etiquette to be returned in the world of punk rock. Take the closing night of the Vans Warped Tour, which saw a stand-off between the not-so-good folks of Pontiac,…
Nothing confusing about “real” — you either are or you aren’t. It’s like art or porn or funny — you know it when you see it, and you know it when you don’t. Like millionaire rappers talking about life on the street, for example. There’s something very unreal about that,…
Anyone who pays the slightest attention to popular music knows that punk rock hasn’t been the typical nihilist’s soundtrack of choice for many years, so don’t bother stopping the presses. But there remains plenty of irony in the degree to which the genre has been mainstreamed. Whereas punk acts were…
When Jason Ringenberg walked onstage with the Nashville Scorchers, the two dozen scenemakers masquerading as a crowd never thought for one minute they’d be thinking about this guy 21 years later. This was a novelty act, a joke — and not a particularly good one — consisting of Hank Williams-style…
The kings of desert rock, Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri of Queens of the Stone Age, return with a third album that whips up a sandstorm of epic rock proportions. These dudes fuel themselves on alcohol and drugs, construct mighty psychedelic soundscapes, write some bitchin’ guitar riffs and handsome harmonies…
Maybe the Dixie Chicks dared to undertake this acoustic, bluegrass-flavored album in order to kill the dumb-blonde image they’ve always teasingly courted and never seriously deserved. Or maybe the astounding success of the tradition-soaked O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack has finally been acknowledged in Nashville’s corporate halls. Or maybe,…
If Beenie Man weren’t still smashing it on the ragga circuit, as he has been for nearly a decade, his crossover success in U.S. markets might taint his street cred. But instead, his lyrical skills and charisma just translate, making him a pioneer in bridging the long-puzzling disconnect between Jamaican…
Dwight Yoakam is the unsung champion of today’s alt-country movement. His 1986 debut, Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc., made both country music and cowboy hats cool for rockers and punks alike. Listeners craving substance and soul found both in Yoakam’s timeless, gritty sound. Through him, many discovered the songwriter’s own influences,…
Pharrell Williams wasn’t supposed to be at the MTV Video Music Awards on August 29. According to his busy itinerary, Williams and the other members of the rock band N*E*R*D, the super-successful producer’s ambitious little side project, were supposed to be enjoying a day off between their Holmdel, New Jersey,…
Those looking for a mix CD that represents everything that’s right with dance music today need look no further. Trevor Jackson, the man behind last year’s popular Playgroup LP, has compiled and mixed a collection of groovers that spans the past two decades. Jam-packed with ’80s production, DJ Kicks best…
After Def Jux Records released Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein last year, hip-hop heads dying for a new direction in the art form began clamoring for more stuff that mixes ambient noise with East Coast rhymin’. RJD2 has stepped in nicely, but all hail the real kings of warm, noise-drenched,…
