What do Willie Nelson and Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips have in common? Besides resin-caked brainstems, both legends have handpicked the same unknown singer-songwriter as an opening act: Travis Graves, otherwise known as Mt. Egypt. And while his upcoming sophomore disc, Perspectives, is already sparking up a buzz on…
It’s hard to believe that the Fleshtones have been at it for 30 years. Beachhead sounds as youthful, snotty and out of control as anything they’ve ever cut, brimming over with joyous garage-band enthusiasm. They kick things off with “Bigger and Better,” in which they shout: “It’s nothing new, it’s…
It was inevitable that part of the fallout of the post-punk/punk-funk riot that recently wrapped its icy fingers around indie rock would be voracious crate-diggers starting to work back through history, excavating any overlooked band that roughly approximated the bass-bulging and jittery riffing taking up hourlong blocks on MTV2. One…
Brazilian chanteuse Lilian Vieira went to study voice in Rotterdam, where she met drummer Stefan Kruger and keyboard wiz Stefan Schmid. And although their collaboration is based in Holland, the sound is pure Brazil. The trio is continually finding unique ways to blend electronic beats with samba, afoxé and other…
While you wait for the next Coldplay album, Nashville’s Blue Merle should fill in nicely. It’s eerie how much singer Lucas Reynolds’ tenor sounds just like the voice of Coldplay leader Chris Martin. Named after a Led Zeppelin lyric (not the Australian sheepdog), this foursome somewhat distinguishes itself by using…
It’s no surprise that our most soulful president tapped Buckwheat Zydeco to play both of his inaugurations. Slick Willy knew no one other than the oft-labeled “world’s greatest party band” could, well, you know, get the party started. Buck, born Stanley Dural Jr., refuses to follow a set list, opting…
Well, stick a boot in my ass and whistle “Dixie,” I do believe Toby Keith has gone soft! Seems like only yesterday the linebacker-size Oklahoman was the biggest, baddest mofo in all of country music — favorite of rowdy rednecks from coast to coast; godsend to U.S. Army recruiters; mainstay…
Any excuse for a party, right? Local dance rock institution Hot Pink! is throwing itself a pre-two-year anniversary get-down before its actual two-year birthday party. We like their style. On Friday, August 12, DJ Nimh and his cronies are flying in legendary NYC impresario DJ Michael T., creator of the…
Modern U.S. life sure is rubbish, asserts Koufax singer Robert Suchan on his Kansas-based quintet’s third album: We’ve got a cheater for a president (“Back and Forth”) conning the nation through a war (“Blind Faith”), but ignorance reigns supreme because the education system is a joke (“Why Bother At All”)…
A Wilhelm Scream may win the award for best song titles this year. Here are the top three: “The Kids Can Eat a Bag of Dicks,” a quick post-hardcore tune with a nice bass solo and an emo breakdown (no, that’s not a joke); “Me vs. Morrissey in the Pretentiousness…
A grotesque vegetable, psychedelic rock is rarely served on its own. But just a smidgen lends weight to pop, color to blues, brains to country, and space to dance music. Modey Lemon is that unusual band that takes it straight. On The Curious City, the Pittsburgh trio’s second album, fun-house…
The Red Chord must be familiar with European theater; the Boston band took its name from a German play in which a schizophrenic man slits his lover’s throat and then reverts to his normal self, asking, “My love, what is that red cord across your neck?” It’s both poetic and…
Anyone paying attention knows that punk bands are in a Zelig-like state of national confusion. So if Scandinavians can sound like Detroit rockers and the Japanese can capture British hardcore, then what seems so perverse about an L.A. band that embodies Boston street-punk? Maybe it’s just our familiarity with American…
1. Led Zeppelin, Houses of the Holy (Atlantic) 2. The Beatles, The Beatles (The White Album) (Apple) 3. Cream, Fresh Cream/Disraeli Gears (Atco) 4. Black Sabbath, Paranoid (Warner Bros.) 5. The Who, Who’s Next (Decca) 6. David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust (RCA) 7. Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland (Reprise) 8. The Beatles,…
Because indie rock has settled into a kind of polite earnestness best characterized by well-intentioned pasty-faces like Youth Group, and because electronica is slowly getting its corners sanded by the Postal Service, the next logical step was to combine the two. A number of bands have already fiddled with this…
Well, someone had to play OMD in rock ‘n’ roll’s never-ending ’80s remake — why not Minotaur Shock? We mean that as a compliment; essentially the work of one man, David Edwards, Maritime’s chipper, chirpy electro recalls both the spartan arrangements and the casual elegance of its British forebears. Nothing’s…
Thank you-know-who for Mormons, because we never would have had good ol’ blasphemous goth music otherwise. The blurry rear cover photo of element a440’s debut album makes the troubled trio of Halo, Trick and December look like Columbine trick-or-treaters (singer Halo looks especially spookish with his severely razored Nixon hairline),…
You could file Danny Barnes’ new album under folk, blues, old time, alt-country or gospel, but there isn’t a single category that defines his free-flowing acoustic alchemy. Barnes’ sparse banjo picking, and the high lonesome fiddling of Brittany Haas, makes the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” sound like an ancient…
This Avenue of the Arts MC may have shortened his moniker to Anglo-Saxon, but you can still call him Ill Al — he sure lives up to the name with incredible rhymes on his new disc, Unplug, which is being jointly released by two up-and-coming local indie labels, Grave 9…
If we didn’t have a certain amount of column space to fill, we’d just let Dance Disaster Movement’s name stand as everything you need to know about the band. You can dance to it, natch, you can wiggle and frug to the skittering, propulsive beats and bristling hooks. It’s a…
The year was 2000. I Am Shelby Lynne, the singer-songwriter’s declaration of independence after a career of genre-hopping and commercial frustration, had finally established her soulful, sultry country persona. At last, she didn’t need to listen to the charts or the label heads anymore — she was her own woman,…
Pelican is the Mars Volta for metalheads. It’s transcendent, complex and experimental. Unlike the Mars Volta, however, Pelican’s music flows so smoothly, a vocalist isn’t necessary to help the listener navigate the intricate aural landscape created by these four Chicago men. After inking with Hydrahead Records (Isis, Pig Destroyer), the…
