If you take a cynic’s view toward “expanded” reissues of recent albums, then, yeah: Anymore, the masters don’t even get shelved before record labels are padding releases with videos and B-sides, and dangling them before the same folks who bought the albums last year. From a consumer’s standpoint, buying such…
Based on polls conducted last week, here are some of the reasons Americans chose The Elected this year: 1) They ran a positive, intelligent, feel-good, idea-filled campaign with their second album, Sun, Sun, Sun; 2) They’re uniters, not dividers — the quartet’s message of country-tinged indie- and chamber-rock appealed to…
The thinking-man’s-metal tag that hangs on Isis seems bad for business, but guitarist/vocalist Aaron Turner and his comrades don’t appear to mind. After all, the jacket of their new CD includes the quote (“Nothing is true, everything is permitted”) that inspired the album’s title, as well as a quasi-footnote conceding…
Everybody knows that Dubya is a diehard country music fan, but even the good ol’ boys would have wrinkled their noses if Trace Adkins had played “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” at the Republican National Convention in 2004. Unfortunately, that hick-hop song didn’t surface until last year, so there was no chance…
Wherein Tom Waits cleans out the closet, holds a garage sale and finds the crowd begging for more, more, more. Hence the 26 soundtrack-compilation-etc. familiars and 30 “new” songs that sound like all the old ones, spread over three discs that glibly and ably summarize the career thus far: “Brawlers”…
It’s no secret the devilish dance demons of Sadisco hate Tranzylvania. Besides nursing a grudge over how an overzealous bouncer at the popular weekly goth night allegedly broke Sadisco member Dark Father’s arm last year, members of the freaky faction of DJs and party fiends feel Tranzylvania is “boring and…
The Trucks
Here’s a group of girls who look like they’re dressed for a slutty, gender-bending slumber party, singing a song called “Titties” that asks a question like, “What makes you think we can fuck, just because you put your tongue in my mouth and twisted my titties, baby?” But The Trucks…
When I heard the Rolling Stones were coming to Phoenix on another of their supposed “final” tours, I overdrew my checking account to buy tickets. Usually, when I break the bank for music, it’s to buy rare vinyl pressings by obscure sludge/punk bands like Drunks With Guns, Lubricated Goat, Grong…
Paris, Milan, New York. . . Scottsdale? Okay, so maybe we aren’t top billing for fashion hot spots, but with the ever-increasing flow of higher fashion retail possibilities pouring into the Valley, we may get there someday, dammit. And if you happened to be in Scottsdale on Friday, November 3,…
Anyone with a dog-eared copy of the Flying Burrito Brothers’ debut The Gilded Palace of Sin knows the concept of old-school R&B played by a traditional country-and-western band is nothing new. But Tucson’s Hacienda Brothers don’t have to wage an awareness campaign for country-rock like the Burritos did, leaving them…
Over the course of a 30-year career, Joni Mitchell went from being a distinctive folk singer to a pompous artiste drowning in highfalutin orchestral arrangements. Whether Mitchell was her model or not, Joanna Newsom seems to have followed the same ill-advised path, but in only two years. Returning after her…
Pete Townshend’s clearly playing to the school of thought that says Who’s Next is better than The Who Sell Out here. And it goes beyond the way he “re-investigates” the oscillating synth riff of “Baba O’Riley” in the first few seconds of The Who’s first album in 24 years. This…
While purists continue splitting hairs over “true” heavy-metal style, Danava combs the genre into a weave of fantastic art-rock wizardry that leaves the shtick straight by the wayside. For its full-length debut, Kemado Records’ dark horse moves between kohl-cloaked glam and by-the-misty-bog Zeppelin hallucination fantasies; gargantuan stoner rhythms and high…
At 75, Ike Turner is still one mean motherfucker. Risin’ With the Blues, his first release of new material in three years, is as tough and weathered as the man himself, full of searing guitar work and his ever-prevalent tough-guy persona. Mixing half a dozen quality originals (including the signature…
Tucson may seem like an unlikely home for a French man who plays jazzy, eclectic pop-folk, but Parisian transplant Naim Amor is a man of many flavors. While his own melancholy music is filled with dreamy, soft instrumentation and his smoky-voiced accent, he considers everyone from the Sex Pistols to…
Roots-rockers the Damnwells may have had their first taste of major-label compromise when Epic Records blanked out the title to their debut’s 41-second leadoff track, “Assholes.” Come on, Epic — is that really still a bad word? Anyway, the band reprised the song in full, fleshed-out glory for last year’s…
Don’t let those could-be-Finnish song titles fool you. Anathallo hails from Michigan, its name draws reference from a Japanese folktale, and its debut, Floating World, bears little resemblance to any of the zillion CD-Rs recorded in recent years by Avarus or Avarus-associated concerns. This five-years-running septet fuses the reeling, jet-stream…
Damn, Diosa’s sure got some mad DJ skills. The punky female turntablist, who got into the scratching-and-spinning biz after witnessing a “life-altering” performance by Z-Trip in 2000, is not only a member of such she-jay collectives as Females Wit Funk, but she’s also been featured in the pages of Sonik…
If Las Vegas can have its homegrown Britpop, why not Tucson? The Killers acclimated us to Yanks and synths again, but The Year of Acceleration is here to say, “What about surliness and passionate songs about the sun never shining and prescription medicine, then?” This is no ironic re-creation of…
The last time you encountered Native American music, you were probably in the middle of a deep-tissue massage. Long Winter Nights, on the other hand, should be blazing over the PA at a bustling pub. This is round dance music — raw, joyous drum and chant, far from the sedative…
On Friday, October 20, Anderson’s Fifth Estate in Scottsdale provided the perfect excuse to pair your ratty old Ramones tee shirt with some leggings at the Pretty Vacant! kickoff party, featuring DJ Marky Ramone. Indie kids, poppy punkers, and other Valley vagrants gradually drained in and boozed up, filling the…
It’s close to midnight and something evil’s lurking in the dark; under the moonlight you see a sight that almost stops your heart. . . There was no getting away from Michael Jackson’s Thriller at Alwun House’s Monster’s Ball on Saturday, October 30. The devilish ditty did the trick when…
