For the third straight album, Alabama’s Drive-By Truckers write what they know with a zeal unsurpassed in American rock groups. Suicide, drugs, corruption, tornadoes, family — these complex topics populate The Dirty South, a bracing reconsideration of life below the Mason-Dixon Line. What had become an easy cultural stereotype –…
The name “Americana” is a little like a supermarket — waffles and plastic forks don’t have a lot in common, but you can find them both under the same roof. Musically, Americana can mean everything from Joni Mitchell to The Cramps, and in its stricter sense, the granddaddy stylistic progenitor…
Although its skillful hip-hop style was linked with the Native Tongues movement when it burst out of the New York City suburbs in 1990, Brand Nubian never earned the kind of universal love given to “conscious” contemporaries A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul. Why? Because all of its…
Like the black-blooded, flesh-rotted, brain-slurping demons of the kitschy B-movies they adore, you simply can’t stop the Cramps. Nor should you want to. Thirty years into their deliciously decadent career, latex-clad howler Lux Interior and six-string-slinging supervixen Poison Ivy Rorschach (and whatever rhythm section they’re employing this week) are just…
The glorious thing about playing Chicago buzz band The M’s debut for the first time is that it captures the thrill of discovery that the band itself must have had upon hearing its first home recordings. Coming together from the remnants of several blown-over Windy City pop bands, the group…
“Wot d’you call it, gahhh-ridge? Wot d’you call it, uhhhr-bin? Wot d’you call it, tewww-step?” So gently pokes impish English MC/producer Wiley at the beginning of “Wot Do U Call It,” the third track on his solo debut, Treddin’ on Thin Ice. Like it or not, Wiley understands, his captivating,…
In the midst of an undervalued solo career that’s lasted longer than the Replacements ever did, Paul Westerberg continues to craft durable records for an ever-diminishing cult audience. And while the deceptively titled Folker doesn’t perfectly encapsulate aging, parenthood and marriage like his ’02 gem, Stereo/Mono, the new album mines…
With singer/guitarist Trever Keith and bassist Scott Shifflet dedicating their time to their rock supergroup Viva Death with Josh Freese (A Perfect Circle) and Shifflet’s brother Chris (Foo Fighters), Face to Face has announced its dissolution. Coming out of the Southern California punk rock hotbed home of Bad Religion and…
Pity the gladly submissive rock consumer, always in the market for a proper ass kicking. Where’s one to turn in 2004, with so much tight denim and retro-riffage being proffered, and nary a well-aimed boot? Somewhere back there in the primordial pavement is the answer, and it goes by one…
With West Coast punk having attained the rarefied cultural stature of bobbleheads and above-the-ass-crack tattoos, its pioneers aren’t exactly first in line for an interview with Terry Gross. But decades since inventing goth-punk and five years after regaining the rights to the name T.S.O.L., this Orange County quartet still offers…
1. Omar A. Rodriguez-Lopez, A Manual Dexterity: Soundtrack 1 (Golden Standard Laboratories) 2. Rilo Kiley, More Adventurous (Brute/Beaute) 3. Björk, Medulla (Elektra/Asylum) 4. Guided By Voices, Half Smiles of the Decomposed (Matador) 5. Trashcan Sinatras, Weightlifting (Phantom) 6. Clinic, Winchester Cathedral (Domino) 7. Kings of Convenience, Riot on an Empty…
A musician who has continually reinvented himself and yet has remained below the commercial radar, Tony Furtado has proved to be a tremendously versatile and vital artist. While a music student at Cal State Hayward, Furtado entered the Grand National Banjo Championship in Kansas on a whim, and won. He…
Whether you consider her a peddler of precious, pretentious twaddle or an endless font of pure Icelandic genius, you have to give Björk credit for eschewing the safe option. No other platinum-selling diva has had the guts to forge such idiosyncratic paths as this charismatic singer has done over the…
They’re right about the empty street: That’s the only place these two knit-wearing, tightly harmonizing, acoustic-guitar-strumming Norwegian folk-popsters could survive a riot, if the soft-shoed ballads and featherweight “rockers” on their third album are any indication. Get past the intrinsic tweeness of their sound — and of their album cover,…
Ben Weaver is a folk/Americana songwriter, guitarist and singer with a rough sing/say voice that brings to mind the younger John Prine, a sly growl perfectly suited to his downbeat tales of lost love and hopelessness. He has a gift for startling images and melodies that stick in your mind…
Martina Topley-Bird is the female vocalist who was the focal point of Tricky’s groundbreaking first three albums. Back then, the two switched traditional roles, with Topley-Bird playing the male to Tricky’s female side. Five years after the duo’s split, Topley-Bird released the essence of her very feminine being in a…
Sam Rosenthal brings a new meaning to the term “dark arts.” Since he founded the goth collective Black Tape for a Blue Girl 18 years ago, Rosenthal has experimented with a variety of musicians and sounds, from the ethereal (flutes and female vocalists) to the eclectic (edgy electronics and baritone…
Brian Vander Ark is probably one of the least known popular indie singer-songwriters. As lead singer-songwriter for the Michigan-based band the Verve Pipe, he scored hits with the songs “The Freshmen” and “Photograph.” Unfortunately, the band fell victim to record company red tape and slipped through the cracks. That doesn’t…
This Thursday night, September 9, Arizona music historian and classic vinyl king Johnny D, a.k.a. John Dixon, was supposed to man the tables at the Blunt Club at the P.I. in Tempe, alongside fellow crate-diggers ChaseOne and Smite. Unfortunately, Johnny D is instead recovering from a recent heart bypass surgery,…
Like Dave Matthews, Canadian singer-songwriter Sam Roberts is a bit charismatically challenged. Despite his long hippie hair and Christ-like beard, Roberts is an average-looking guy who can appear a bit dorky when he strikes a rock star pose on stage, but that’s offset by an ability to crank out anthemic,…
1. Young Buck, Straight Out of Cashville (Interscope) 2. 213, The Hard Way (TVT) 3. Pitbull, M.I.A.M.I. (TVT) 4. R. Kelly, Happy People/U Saved Me (Zomba) 5. Shyne, Godfather Buried Alive (Def Jam) 6. Mase, Welcome Back (Bad Boy) 7. Prince, Musicology (Epic) 8. Los Lonely Boys, Los Lonely Boys…
Success came neither easily nor quickly for John Hiatt. Though he worked in Nashville as a songwriter within a few years of graduating high school, and even had Three Dog Night take one of his songs, “Sure As I’m Sitting Here,” into the Top 20, personal success was a long…
