Tramps & Thieves’ first full-length release (with a whopping 16 tracks) is a lot more rockin’ than the band’s 2004 Mill Avenue Cowboys EP, with fewer acoustic moments and more straight-up shit-kickin’ songs that address issues like the Iraq war, outlaw hippies, and hallucinating in the desert. Songs like “Sidewinder”…
Bad Religion singer Greg Graffin gets old-timey on Cold As the Clay, an unplugged sophomore solo LP that mixes original songs with similar Deadwood-era tunes like the finger-picked murder-hoedown “Little Sadie.” Graffin plays traditional music as convincingly as he handles punk. He’s no Mike Ness, though the disc will probably…
“We ain’t no Harajuku Girls/We just straight-up rock ‘n’ roll,” Puffy AmiYumi sings on “Call Me What You Like,” the opening track from their eighth studio album. The song primarily expresses the female Japanese duo’s desire to be taken seriously as “rockers” — a tall order given the kiddy-fluff nature…
You could do a lot worse than to listen to this trio of DJ/producers from Holland all summer. After a string of sought-after 12-inch singles on London’s Jalapeno Records, Kraak & Smaak (the name is a Dutch saying, not a drug reference) makes its U.S. debut with a tasty full-length…
As a teenager, John Lee Hooker Jr. was a featured player in John Lee Sr.’s road show, and then spent the next 20 years fighting the demons of drugs, drink, divorce, and jail. Given his troubled past, you might expect Junior’s music to be even more dark and dangerous than…
India.Arie has always sounded a little too much like the musical equivalent of Oprah. The singer-songwriter’s music (best exemplified by her debut, Acoustic Soul) has always centered on overly positive, Afrocentric songs that embrace love, life and the challenges of womanhood. Her first two albums were innovative experiments with a…
The first time Tom Petty decided to cut a solo record with Jeff Lynne of ELO producing, it ended up being his biggest collection of pop hits since Damn the Torpedoes. While there’s not much chance that Highway Companion will do what Full Moon Fever did on radio — it’s…
Anthony Hamilton hasn’t had an easy time of it. His first release was shelved when Uptown Records hit the skids. And then, after proving himself a critical darling with sales to match on MCA, he signed to Soulife, which went out of business just in time to not release what…
When Social Distortion first started cranking out punkabilly anthems like “Mommy’s Little Monster” in the early ’80s, punk hadn’t yet pogo’d into the realm of pop-culture pretentiousness — something Social D front man Mike Ness addresses on the band’s 1998 live album Live at the Roxy. Before the band launches…
Caleb Engstrom is old enough for you to buy him a drink, but young enough for you to still feel guilty about it. This 21-year-old Iowa City boy is living the dream. He dropped out of the University of Iowa (but don’t worry, kiddies, he says he’ll probably go back),…
The turntable scene here in the PHX seems pretty fucking fickle sometimes, as DJs repeatedly relocate their record-spinning gigs from club to club — or pull the plug on them entirely — faster than they can send out notices on MySpace. In the past year alone, local scenesters have been…
Second only to the fabled Sports Illustrated cover jinx is the curse of Winona Ryder, whereby most musicians who date the actress — Dave Pirner, Adam Duritz, Evan Dando, etc. — subsequently watch their careers crumble. Perhaps Jersey singer-songwriter and former Winona boy-toy Pete Yorn can buck that trend. His…
Of all the labels to be unfairly saddled with, the oxymoronic “Christian punk” tag has dogged this Pacific Northwest trio for more than a decade. Sure, these fine, not-so-young lads don’t spew expletives like hardcore legends Black Flag, nor do they wallow in sexual depravity like punk godfather Iggy Pop,…
1. The Format, Dog Problems (Nettwerk Records) 2. Rise Against, Sufferer and the Witness (Geffen Records) 3. Thom Yorke, The Eraser (XL Recordings) 4. Hinder, Extreme Behavior (Umvd Labels) 5. Panic! At the Disco, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out (Decaydance) 6. The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Don’t You Fake It…
Hey, Joey, baby, it’s me — Johnette. I know I haven’t called in a really long time, but I wanted you to know that in case you never heard that one song, I’m still not angry anymore. In fact, I’ve been feeling pretty content lately (at least that’s what my…
Who ever thought of having vocal harmonies in heavy metal? Well, System of a Down, Evanescence, and Lacuna Coil, for starters, but the debut CD from Eyes Set to Kill proves that you don’t have to be innovative to be sonically savvy. The core of ESTK — 17-year-old lead vocalist…
Twenty-one-year-old Patch, the sole member and producer of Die Kranken Katzchen (“The Sick Kitten”), files herself under “Industrial/Goth/Techno” on her MySpace page, and has also likened herself to “a female Nine Inch Nails.” But the atmospheric compositions on Transude are way more experimental than anything Trent Reznor would dare do…
Inventing punk was a dirty job. You had to make up new rules for the guitar, cram your hairy appendages into ladies’ pumps and lingerie, get hooked on hard drugs, and squeeze Howlin’ Wolf and the Shangri-Las into the same three minutes. That routine shortened the lives of two New…
In 1961, fledgling jazz label Impulse garnered considerable out-of-the-gate clout by landing an exclusive contract with John Coltrane. It was a brilliant coup because, at that time, the saxophonist was compiling the finest working band of the 1960s. The reed giant was about to take his new quartet with him…
Mr. Lif’s sophomore full-length is brilliantly structured to be a metaphor for the battle people endure to be heard. Mo’ Mega moves from a chaotic first half in which the Boston rapper’s frustrated voice cranes through the rubble of El-P’s production (every bit as suffocating as it was when Cannibal…
Thom Yorke’s first individual outing is about what you’d expect — a glitchy, primarily electronic excursion that mirrors Radiohead’s most recent work. The Eraser’s dour compositions conjure the icy, detached vibe of Kid A and Amnesiac, and were it not for Yorke’s beguiling melodies and consistently compelling fey falsetto, it…
As the U.K.’s most infectious punks, the Buzzcocks may one day be forced to take the fall for every lame-ass pop-punk band this side of Blink-182. But the Buzzcocks’ original blend of over-caffeinated pop and punk was always more adventurous than that. And more legitimately punk. While everyone from Hüsker…
