Music

Cool is in the eye of the beholder, and poet/writer Lewis MacAdams has come up with a blueprint charting the development of the elusive, unspoken, Zenlike state of American “cool.” Don’t be misled by the title. Birth of the Cool isn’t a history recounting the famed Miles Davis’ nonet sessions…

Aijuswanaseing, the debut album from Philadelphia’s Musiq Soulchild, marks him as worth paying attention to, even if the record often slips a little too readily into contorted vocal gymnastics on an otherwise simple melody, or the pristine layered harmony — two elements that have become all but the aural fingerprints…

The Gourds’ Kevin Russell is singing in a rich, backwoods holler. Over the light pluck of a mandolin, a voice rises, sounding as if it were picked up off of Highway 61 — somewhere between Bill Monroe’s blue Kentucky home and Levon Helm’s Arkansas shack. But as evocative as Russell’s…

Preacher Boy is on the run. The artist formerly known as Christopher Watkins is somewhere just past the exit to Boise, trying to get the hell out of Utah as fast as he can. “We are really in the wilds now, man. I don’t know how long it’s gonna hold…

“It’s pretty simple. There’s no smoke and mirrors. We’re just a musical group.” John Herndon is looking for a way to make it clearer, to say that all he and the rest of the guys in his band do is plug things into amps and set up microphones and try…

It would seem, on the face of things, that the musicians who want to be writers greatly outnumber the writers who want to be musicians. Maybe John Updike harbors a secret desire to strap on a Stratocaster and stand nobly under a shower of pubescent panties, but, as of yet,…

Was it really that long ago? 1987 — when Copernican rumblings emanating from Walthamstow, England, reached across the Atlantic and transmitted small but significant tremors at we indiecentric, psychedelia-inclined record collectors? Nearly a decade and a half — and umpteen albums — after Inner Marshland set its controls for the…

You can blame Blood, Sweat & Tears and Spyro Gyra for ruining the word “fusion,” because since the heyday of those groups, utter the word and thoughts of endless wank-offery appear, followed by an image of some dude soloing with a stupid pained, just-lost-a-pinkie-to-his-hedge-clippers look on his face. If you…

Okay, so this six-piece San Francisco-based honky-tonk combo pretty much has a handful of notes in its repertoire. And maybe there aren’t many surprises, musically or lyrically, on Alameda County Line, the group’s third full-length release (and the second to be produced by Dave “King of California” Alvin); this is…

Talking about music, goes the old wisdom, is like dancing about architecture. What Van Morrison called the “inarticulate speech” at the center of musical expression might explain why a significant number of music bios, from the glamour-puss paperback to the stately career overview, often spiral off into fan-boy strokes or…

So they’re of legal drinking age now, and they look it, too: On the CD sleeve, Donnas A., C., F., and R. dress it up and tone it down ’til they resemble girls who went from serving cocktails to ordering them without having to flash fake IDs. Gone are the…

Isobel Campbell is the sensitive posh bird on the cover, wearing a cream twinset, looking like a romantic French schoolgirl holding a big fluffy black cat. Argghh! Blond girls and kitties, conservatory trained musicians and a member of Belle and Sebastian. If there were ever a vote for High Princess…

It’s that blasted rock iconography that gets in the way, screwing up what should be a fresh perspective and an unprejudiced listen. For example: If you’ve heard about Wisconsin-based trio Rainer Maria, you probably know that Caithlin De Marrais and Kyle Fischer met at a poetry workshop at the University…

Let’s face it — the tuba isn’t exactly a sexy instrument. When one thinks tuba, among the images generated are: polka, old men (detail: old men wearing black knee-high socks and bad plaid shorts) and flabby, elongated cheeks. Just how the New York-based trio Drums & Tuba produces such layered,…

It’s been a decade since the United States caught the electronic music bug, and one of our first rave-culture publications, Urb, celebrated its 10-year anniversary last month. Back in 1991, the future of American dance-culture reportage seemed as bright as that of the music, which was exploding with new ideas…

With feet nimbly perched in rootsy alt-country, luminous pop and never-say-die ’70s guitar rock, Denton, Texas, quartet 12LB. Test makes a memorable debut that does the region’s roots scene proud. Naturally, reference points do pop up, and the group clearly has the cruise control on its Econoline aimed at Austin…

Techno more than most styles of music is about the use of space. On the original Detroit tracks of the early ’80s, producers brought their synth lines and bass thuds close to the listener, in an attempt to bridge one in the analog/futuristic worlds that existed in their imaginations. Many…

Hi. It’s Keith Sweat. Remember me? Didn’t think so. Well, just to help you out, track number one on my new CD, Didn’t See Me Coming, is a little reminder of all my hits over the past 10 years. I know, I know, a little self-indulgent. Okay, maybe a little…

First and always, it was that voice, a sound that seemed to have traveled 500 years to get here. A clean, high tenor that indulged in no tricks or frills to make its point, but could hint at a cry or a prayer with just a subtle shift. A voice…

Forget Zen — you don’t have to engage in obtuse intellectual gymnastics or wrestle with metaphysical riddles to be perfectly at ease with being in the now. Just ask Daniel Black, lead singer and guitarist for San Diego-based quartet the And/Ors. On the morning of the band’s kickoff show of…