Iron and Wine isn’t an “it,” but a “he” — one Samuel Beam, a Floridian who was discovered by Sub Pop via his introverted lo-fi bedroom tapes. His beautifully calm, almost whispered music was widely heard in the film Garden State alongside Nick Drake, which makes Beam a shoo-in for…
Smokin’ Joe Kubek sure lives up to his moniker, and not because this wild-haired, tattooed, guitar-slinging mountain of a man is often seen clutching a coffin nail in his meaty paw. Instead, the towering Dallas-based axeman regularly sets audiences ablaze with his blistering and bluesy guitar stylings, picking and pulling…
If you end a sentence containing the phrase “Asian American hip-hopper” with a question mark, you probably haven’t heard of Tom Shimura, formerly known as Asia Born, now known as Lyrics Born. He started rapping in the Bay Area, but when he could find no takers for his music, he…
Vaguely folky, kinda psychedelic, slightly jammy, and decidedly challenging, Animal Collective makes records that are impenetrable on first listen. Though its profile raised with last year’s Sung Tongs, the band’s higher visibility hasn’t blunted its musical meanderings. But while Feels succeeds at being sonically enigmatic, patient ears will discover that…
Lawless Element is an odd combo, a mixed-up mash-up of old-school posturing and neo-futurist neon tubing. Instead of rat-a-tat drum machines or screwed-up soul samples, the band lays conversational rhymes over icy, pulsing electronics and a bass boom bigger and deeper and colder than a black hole. It’s sonic schizophrenia…
The headline on the Franz Ferdinand feature in the July 30 NME reads: “Our New Album? It’s Like Nothing You’ve Ever Heard!” Well, no. In truth, Better sounds like plenty you’ve heard, either during the early ’80s or in the year-plus since the Scottish band’s debut hit these shores. Strangely,…
Teetering between corny and classic, Junior Brown bangs out a set of Americana-tinged fare that features his acclaimed double-necked plucking and baritone crooning. Bottling the essence of Tex-Mex, Western swing and even surf music (an instrumental jog through the Johnny Rivers classic “Secret Agent Man”), Junior swerves through a varied…
Hot Pink!, the long-reigning queen of the glam-dance scene, seems like it ought to have petered out. Instead, even with founder DJ Nimh spending most of his time in NYC, Hot Pink! continues to evolve and keep all the pretty sparkly kids showing up to shimmy. This Friday, October 14,…
Have you seen Gwen Stefani onstage, on the red carpet, or on camera in one of her countless MTV appearances? She’s a living testimony to the joys of caffeine. She’s a human energy drink. And, in case you haven’t noticed, she’s critic-proof, too, whether we’re talking those outrageous styles she…
You know a band is moving up in the world when the members are excited about their new tour van’s air conditioning. In the past, apparently, The Gossip just had to sweat it out. Luckily for us, new vans mean new albums, and in January, Standing in the Way of…
When Ian Curtis took that final spin on the ceiling fan in May 1980, he momentarily took with him the stern gray guitar rock that was dominating Manchester. In its place came stern gray electropop, bands like Minny Pops and Quando Quango, who essentially copied JD’s M.O., but used synths…
Once an irresistibly goofy Brit-pop trio with ungainly mutton-chop sideburns, Supergrass has reached a point of maturity where it finally seems more interested in studying the menu than in making goo-goo eyes at the waitress. On their fifth full-length, Oxford’s retro-groovers have outgrown monosyllabic teen anthems to embrace the emotional…
1. Atmosphere, You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having (Rhymesayers) 2. Against Me!, Searching for a Former Clarity (Fat Wreck Chords) 3. Reatards, Not Fucked Enough (Empty) 4. Curt Kirkwood, Snow (Little Dog) 5. Blackalicious, The Craft (Anti) 6. Various Artists, Scribble Jam 2005 (Scribble Magazine) 7. Glass Heroes,…
Named after H.G. Lewis’s 1972 B-horror film, the Gore Gore Girls are the queens of the southeast Michigan garage-rock scene that grew up in the late ’90s and went mainstream with the success of the White Stripes. Decked out in spike-heeled boots, fishnets, striped stockings, matching outfits, and ’60s-style bouffants,…
Maybe frontman Peter Hayes was getting in touch with his dysfunctional Brian Jonestown Massacre roots, or maybe things were getting to be too much like the Black Straitjacket Motorcycle Club. Infighting led to drummer Nick Juno quitting the band, and when he asked to come back a few months later,…
Both Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and The National are currently basking in (or perhaps suffering from) the glow of being the next big thing out of New York. Thanks to Pitchfork, most eyes are on CYHSY to take home the prize. The real reason to go out to Modified…
With a barrage of lurid lyrics, NYC’s Cage spits the sort of storyboard rhymes on Hell’s Winter that sound like they’re ripped from an underground graphic novel. The dreary war-zone backdrops come from El-P, RJD2, and Blockhead, and their nimble, diesel-charged compositions help drive Cage’s reckless imagination over the edge…
From the childlike front-cover drawing of a unicorn humping a horse (that’s in turn humping a zebra that’s barfing all over the place) and the back-cover photo of the sister duo dressed like two Native American Boy Georges (we couldn’t make this stuff up), CocoRosie’s Noah’s Ark is out there…
For the last couple of years, Herv Salters has been the secret weapon of Bay Area hip-hop collective Quannum, supplying vintage keyboard sounds for Blackalicious, Lyrics Born, and Lifesavas. Now the French-born, Berkeley-based musician steps out front, releasing a solo album of playful, funky hip-hop, composed entirely with Clavinet, Hammond,…
It must be a bitch being better known as Nicole Richie’s fiancé than for your skills on the tables, but that seems to be the case with DJ AM (a.k.a. Adam Goldstein), at least outside of Hollywood and New York City. But for those in the know, AM’s developed a…
It never could’ve happened with Throbbing Gristle or Merzbow. But the fact that these are different times and that these accomplished clatter merchants have signed to Sub Pop gives us hope that we’re in for a new noise infusion. Everyone’s hedging their bets — even the VH1 Web site has…
If there were a Grammy for “Best Song Title by a Duo or Group with Vocal,” Seattle quintet Minus the Bear would’ve easily taken the statue every year since its 2001 inception. Among the potential winners: “Thanks for the Killer Game of Crisco® Twister,” “Absinthe Party at the Fly Honey…
