In movies, metal bands and their fans are often portrayed as anti-eggheads — note the knee-high nihilists and simpletons of Airheads, This Is Spinal Tap, and The River’s Edge. Well, dig this, Movie Producers of Hollyweird: Those who play metal have also attended music school. That’s right; the core members…
Country music is where rock ‘n’ roll was circa 1962 B.B. (before Beatles) and 1975-76 — lots ‘n’ lots of photogenic hat-hunks and pop(py)-tarts playing corporate-approved approximations of the real stuff. Dale Watson, an Austin performer flying beneath the Nashville radar, puts the “tree” back in country as an insurgent…
Remember when popular music had a message? With today’s army of vapid pop stars and record company-manufactured boy bands under the guise of “rock bands,” it seems as though artists like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez have become as extinct as the woolly mammoth. Then suddenly, the clouds of mediocrity…
With musicians, like athletes, it’s always disheartening to watch them hang around long enough to see their abilities break down. Bad Brains fans, long beset by the band’s notorious instability, have every reason to expect that a present-day reunion album can do nothing but tarnish the band’s hallowed legacy. After…
If we were to take Andrew Jackson Jihad’s latest effort at lyrical value alone, we may suggest a suicide hotline for the folk/punk duo comprising Sean Bonnette and Ben Gallaty. Because we begin visualizing disenfranchised youth snorting coke off a tombstone while reading the Jihad’s lyrics, Edgar Allan Poe, or…
The guys in The Heartless are solid musicians, they have amazing energy onstage, and their melodic punk songs are tighter and more crisp than Fritos in a butt crack. So would somebody please send them some good women so they can sing songs about something other than getting screwed over…
With his hipster-clever DJ alias ganked straight from the legendary series of vampire-killing video games, one would think Atlanta mixmaster Le Castle Vania is gonna be hunting down the undead when he visits the Valley on Friday, July 20. In all likelihood, the only nightcrawlers the 24-year-old turntablist will be…
This week, Club Candids decided to hit Mill Avenue and jump into whatever club seemed most promising. Turns out, the old standby Fat Tuesday was totally rockin’ on Saturday, July 14. (Click here for more photos.) Having never been there before, we’d had the impression that it was for the…
After seeing CTS live, I was impressed by the musicianship and the band’s earnest approach to gimmick-less rock songwriting. There’s nothing trailblazing in the tunes here, but fans of artists like the Gin Blossoms and John Mayer will appreciate the deftness with which CTS recycles the rock paradigm — soaring…
Depending on where listeners were introduced to Bodhisattva’s sonic mania, they may harbor two significantly different profiles of the duo fronted by vocalist/guitarist Justin Cory and drummer Shane Sittig. Compare their brutal first release, Brain Candy for Insanity, with the deranged (yet more accessible) fare contained within the follow-up, Magnetar,…
Rock ‘n’ Western, country ‘n’ roll, twang and Taylor Ham — there’s nothing new here, and that’s fine. The Earps say it’s about the ’70s and they’re right. These guys could be the Apache Junction descendants of David Allan Coe at his orneriest, a mutant barstool baby that is part…
With stunning production from old rival Marley Marl, KRS-One delivers a sharp retort to Nas’ recent proclamation that Hip Hop Is Dead — but not without kicking some dirt on gangsta culture. The highlights on this 12-track disc are many, including “Nothing New,” in which the Teacha delivers his indictment…
Those of you hoping Smashing Pumpkins’ comeback record is an unmitigated disaster will be disappointed: It’s not. Those of you afraid that head Pumpkin Billy Corgan made another The Future Embrace (his über-synthpop, somewhat cheesy solo album) will be happy: He didn’t. With drummer Jimmy Chamberlin the lone member of…
Interpol’s major label debut, Our Love to Admire, isn’t as monochrome (or monotonous) as its previous two albums. “Pioneer to the Falls” is arguably the richest song they’ve ever recorded, a track that channels the stormy textures of the Cure’s Pornography. Death-march piano and woodwinds add counter-melodies, a giant quivering…
Since the Beastie Boys released License to Ill more than two decades ago, all paths into New York nostalgia and downtown have led back to them. So what’s a guy named Adrock, or MCA, or Mike D to do? No wonder, with The Mix-Up, they’ve got nothing to say. It’s…
You know that warm, contented feeling you get when it’s woundingly cold outside and you’re snuggled up in your favorite blanket sipping cocoa and watching Roseanne reruns? You can get nearly the same effect, minus the calories and eyestrain, from the fanciful sounds of What Laura Says Thinks and Feels…
Ever since Motion City Soundtrack frontman Justin Pierce announced his trepidation for what is to come on the insanely catchy “The Future Freaks Me Out,” from the Minneapolis fivesome’s 2003 debut, I Am the Movie (Epitaph), it’s been nearly impossible to deny the band’s infectious hooks. Combining the immediate likability…
Kajak — the sophomore long-player from namesake/frontman Benedikt H. Hermannsson’s Icelandic easy-listening band — may not be the textbook definition of a guilty indie pleasure, but it’s close. The lyrics aren’t in English; the cover art looks like it was designed by your 3-year old nephew; the musicianship’s a smidge…
Neither a critic’s band nor a super-popular radio sensation, Gary Lightbody’s Glasgow group was, once upon a time, just a struggling indie-rock outfit, more Belle & Sebastian insular than Coldplay make-out music. By the time their breakthrough record, Last Straw, finally got to the States in 2004, Snow Patrol had…
The hipster headquarters known as Glam, 3174 East Indian School Road, isn’t just a hotspot for seeing faux-hawked emo kids making out with chicks wearing American Apparel on a glowing, multicolored dance floor straight outta Saturday Night Fever. The joint’s like the world’s coolest jukebox come to life, with bomb-ass…
I am drunk, and I’m standing in the middle of a baseball field, dancing with Governor Janet Napolitano. No, this wasn’t a dream, although I have to admit I woke up the next morning and wondered, “Did that really happen?” But it did, and on the 4th of July. And…
We remember when “nightlife” at 40th Street and Indian School consisted of a run-down Taco Bell and a super-scummy dive bar. But now that the Arcadia neighborhood is suddenly sexy, there’s a little scene happening at The Vig that we decided to tap into on Saturday, July 7. (Click here…
