Title: Horae, a three-song EP.Basics: Billing themselves as an “electronic/rock” band, this Tucson foursome formed in 2008 and recently opened for Neon Indian. That got my attention since Psychic Chasms was one of my favorite albums of 2009 and Neon Indian’s November show in Phoenix was just as fantastic.Neon Indian these guys ain’t,…
Welcome to The Grand Tour, a regular feature where PHXmusic.com takes you inside practice spaces, tour vans and seedy apartments occupied by Phoenix-area bands. This week we give you a look inside the rehersal space occupied by Hashknife Outfit. If you’d like your band featured, tweet @PHXmusicdotcom. You can catch Hasknife live at…
Normally, when someone gets his or her throat slit open, you’d expect a ton of blood to come gushing out. But Phoenix hardcore band Royal Monsters are a little more optimistic, judging by their flier for a show at Mesa’s The Underground on Friday, February 26. According to this intricate…
Modesty is hardly one of DJ Emile’s strong suits. The 30-something mixmaster loves lengthy diatribes, and his favorite subject for discussion is Phoenix’s lackluster nightlife. It’s plagued with boring dance music and low turnouts, Emile proclaims, paling in comparison to when he performed for hundreds with the elite Bombshelter DJs…
You know what must really chap Nick Oliveri’s frequently bare hide? Seeing ex-Queens of the Stone Age bandmate Josh Homme with his new rock-legend friends and his new supergoup, just looking so fucking happy, while poor Oliveri is stuck hustling beard-wax money by playing a series of West Coast solo…
Nothing says “modern American blues” quite like . . . Mesa? It’s the dodgiest cultural pairing this side of “Utah” and “jazz,” but that hasn’t stopped the Phoenix Blues Society from establishing a fine live-music tradition in this city of menudo joints and Mormon churches. In this, the 19th year…
Embrace your inner middle-schooler for a moment and recall a time, long ago, when, in your young mind, the jam band genre represented something truly “alternative” and fascinatingly “indie.” Maybe it was the lengthy tracks that lured you in, much like the freaky Lindsey Weir first experiencing The Dead. Maybe…
In the late ’90s, Lawrence, Kansas’ The Appleseed Cast played the kind of rock that would earn a band a spot on Emo Diaries compilations, the long-running and long-suffering series curated by Appleseed Cast’s label, Deep Elm Records. Yeah, emo, but not the tarted-up, eye-lined emo of today — the…
At the risk of offending CMT viewers or people who still watch the Grammys, I wasn’t all that familiar with the Zac Brown Band when I was assigned this piece. I had seen his album in record stores (he looks like he needs a shower), and I think I had…
Get to the Chopper…John’s that is. If our photographs are any evidence, that’s exactly what the beer-swilling Thursday night bar crowd in this week’s “Club Candids” had in mind. Check out the shots in our slide show and remember that the next time you go out for drinks, it could…
New Times singled Radio Phoenix out in our annual Best Of Phoenix issue as the “Best Online Music Station That Should Be a Radio Station.”Actually, in addition to being too-indie-for-the-airwaves the station spins a few things that aren’t even topping the charts at the Valley’s record stores. Check out their…
Is…Aggressive(Self-released)Grade: B+Well it took three weeks, of doing these You Asked For It reviews of local records, but I finally got an album for that I could actually enjoy. Truly, picturing the other bands I’ve reviewed for this project playing live makes me cringe, but not Joey Arroyo Band. Their…
Welcome back to our continuing series The Grand Tour, a feature where PHXmusic.com takes you inside practice spaces, tour vans and seedy apartments occupied by Phoenix-area bands. This week we give you a look inside Seven Car Pileup’s rehearsal space. If you’d like your band featured, tweet @PHXmusicdotcom or leave…
It would probably be plenty of fun to sit down to a nice candlelit dinner with the boys of Austin, Texas-based band Harlem. The good-looking threesome plays poppy indie rock that makes it evident the group isn’t all about being fancy and dressing up in matador jackets–they seem like the…
The club gods haven’t been too kind to either DJ Joshie or Benni Beatnik over the past two years. A couple of summers ago, their popular weekly dance affair, Electrostatic, was 86’d at Glam after the club’s property owners decided to shut down the hipster bar. Then, the situation repeated…
It’s not uncommon for formerly wicked musicians to foreswear their evil ways and turn to the Heavenly Father for inspiration. Dylan did it, as did MC Hammer, former Korn member Brian “Head” Welch, and the late New York Dolls bassist Arthur Kane. So does the fact that the Asylum Street…
Beware the anthrax-laced bubblegum-pop of Cheese on Bread. Musically, the kooky New York fivesome is tangy, upbeat, and innocuous — sort of a more sugary version of The Cardigans, with singer-lyricists Sara FitzSimmons and Dan Fishback chirping happily over a sunny montage of zydeco, country, synth-pop, and Beach Boys-style compositions…
One must admit that Mariah Carey seems much cooler — much saner — after her gutsy, concealer-free turn in the Oscar-nominated abuse saga Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. You think it was easy for the image-oriented star of Glitter to go public with the same mottled bed-face…
Upon hearing Henry Rollins perform one of his profanity-laden, loudmouthed spoken-word tirades on cassette, my then-middle-aged father adroitly summed up the former Black Flag frontman’s blustering travelogues in one sentence: “He’s just like Charles Kuralt, only with a dirty mouth.” And that’s pretty much the case. (Well, aside from the…
Listening to the first track from Matt Hires’ debut full-length, Take Us to the Start, it’s impossible to deny that the Floridian singer-songwriter dabbles in the melodramatic, quavering vocal delivery Conor Oberst popularized. Hires is sorta like Oberst 2.0. He’s got the yearning, quasi-depressed lyrics. He’s got a face that…
The Oak Ridge Boys took their name from a Tennessee town best known for the Manhattan Project. What started as a gospel quartet evolved into a Grammy-winning sensation that rode the pop culture wave of southern accents that briefly dominated the terrestrial radio waves in the 1970s. Listen to “Bobbie…
Stinkweeds has always been a haven for indie rockers and hipsters. They specialize in independent music in a way that few others do. While it seems like most of the kids jonesing for their fix of the lastest indie release head to Tempe, they also travel a little further west…
