Well, the holidays are over; you’ve gotten all the gifts you’re going to get until your birthday, or, if you’re lucky, until you get your tax return back this spring. But if the feds do give you some scrilla back, and you’re the sort who buys concert tickets regularly, don’t…
The liner notes to Batter the Drag’s self-released debut EP, unfathomable depths, give an ominous first impression. There are no song lyrics, no names or faces of musicians — really, no real notes to speak of, aside from a list of people thanked by the band, a spare, black-and-white splatter…
Even the briefest essay about Rosanne Cash requires a list of her reckonable accomplishments: the 11 number one singles, the Grammy award, and always, always her royal musical lineage. But if being Johnny Cash’s daughter got her foot in Music City’s door, and while all those hits kept her on…
Punk has grown as a term to encompass an eclectic array of approaches, and its infiltration of guitar-based underground music is now so complete that everything that’s at least midtempo seems to bear some imprint of the style. It’s to the point where calling a band punk is no more…
Perhaps it’s the omnipresent gray skies, but whatever the cause, the Brits are masters of a strain of gloomy romanticism traceable from Bowie to Blancmange to Morrissey. NYC quartet Elefant channels this dark, synth-driven pop sound (which hit its high-water mark during New Wave’s ’80s reign) with supple melodies and…
Tempe’s “Burrito Brothers” (Chelsea Ide, December 16) in Bluewall Audience will soon be strutting across their high school campuses rocking Chipotle Mexican Grill backpacks. The five teenagers have been using the burrito joint as a spot to conduct official business with their record label, as long as Turnpike Records has…
Y’all rellies ready to get your gurp on? Kill Mill resident DJs Foundation, Dirty Napz, and Ether One are bringing that crazy-ass Z-Man, the verbal innovator, and Awol One, of the Shape Shifters, to town on Tuesday, January 18. It’s a duo not to be missed; Z-Man is one of…
In the popular imagination, Grammy equals fame and fortune, but it’s unlikely most people reading this will know the name of Grammy-winning troubadour and storyteller David Holt. Holt (an O Brother alumnus) plays washboard, banjo, guitar, harmonica, spoons, bones and other instruments, sometimes all at the same time, with a…
Cutthroat Logic is “representin’ Phoenix to tha fullest.” The band’s song “Phire City” may be the best hip-hop shout-out ever to our desert metropolis, with flows like “I’m from where it’s hotter than fuck/And all they bump on the radio is the most commercial rap/Eminem, Puff, or P-Diddy/Whatever the fuck,…
Here’s a band that’s a cluster of contradictions. It’s called Bowling for Soup, but the members are admittedly terrible bowlers and not big fans of soup. It’s a punk band, but it was nominated for the “Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group” Grammy in 2003. It’s made up…
1. Arcade Fire, Funeral (Merge) 2. Handsome Boy Modeling School, White People (Elektra) 3. Pinback, Summer in Abaddon (Touch & Go) 4. Tom Waits, Real Gone (Epitaph) 5. Elliott Smith, From a Basement on the Hill (Anti) 6. Joanna Newsom, Milk-Eyed Mender (Drag City/Caroline) 7. Kings of Convenience, Riot on…
Thursday 6 Acme Bar & Grill: DJR (all genres) Acme Roadhouse: College Night with DJ J. Alan (Top 40) Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness: DJ Tsunami (Top 40, hip-hop) Anderson’s Fifth Estate: Piranha Room/Area 51 with DJ Jeremy (industrial/goth) Axis/Radius: Ladies’ Night with DJ MCB & Josh Royal (all genres) AZ 88:…
I fucked up, and I’ll admit it. A few months back I reviewed a compilation called Crunk Classics, with songs by dirty south superstars like Lil Jon and Petey Pablo, and I tore it a new asshole. “TVT’s collection of Southern thug rappers is pretty much — to borrow a…
What? You’ve never chain-smoked three packs of unfiltered cigarettes, gone without seeing daylight for six weeks straight, sauntered around town with a dime-store noir in the back pocket of gasoline-soaked jeans, nodded off in the corner in a heroin stupor, or screeched through the dodgiest part of town in a…
Wes Anderson’s new film is his moodiest, most adult yet: Bill Murray’s Steve Zissou, a washed-up oceanographer-filmmaker plainly modeled after Jacques Cousteau, has a heart of gold, of course, but he also curses and behaves irrationally and commands unpaid interns to make him lattes on stolen espresso machines. The film’s…
Junior Kimbrough was a bluesman from the north Mississippi hill country, far enough from the delta to escape the encroachment of most modern conveniences. It was there, removed from outside influences, that Kimbrough developed his wild-ass, uncontrolled style, with rhythms full of unexpected twists and turns and a primal vocal…
“It’s all downhill from here,” Eryn Young declaims on “The Last Migration,” and the band makes good on its threat with a sinister disc overflowing with bleak melodies and an atmosphere fueled by an unlikely mix of electronica and Americana. This husband-and-wife team occupies a space somewhere between the Handsome…
If you didn’t know otherwise while listening to this spellbinding EP, you might swear it’s a recently unearthed Alan Lomax field recording from the 1930s rather than the product of a contemporary alt-folk singer-songwriter. Seattleite Jurado generates that no-fi vibe through the use of “salvaged” reel-to-reel tape (in all its…
With the recent (but supposedly temporary) closing of the Priceless Inn/Boston’s, home of the weekly Blunt Club hip-hop extravaganza, local heads might be worried about filling their nighttime schedules with enough beats and rhymes to keep them from withdrawal convulsions. For now, fear not — Universatile Music, which has brought…
It’s been decades since Chuck Berry merged country and blues pickin’ to write the book on rock ‘n’ roll guitar, and while white Nashville and black Memphis are in the same state, sharing the same cultural roots, you’d never know it unless you’re a roots-music fanatic. Jesse Dayton may not…
Eric Seven, the nucleus of electronic/industrial band Radio Free America, doesn’t strike you as the Trent Reznor type — not even the Dave Gahan/Depeche Mode type, or any other iconic related-genre artist. Sitting on the porch of his producer Daggrr’s small Tempe house, smoking cigarettes and drinking vodka with diet…
The ominous grooves that Shivaree creates for its tales of treachery, frustrated sexuality and emotional defeat sound like the music escaping a carny sideshow tent after midnight. Eerie hints of tango, girl-group R&B, spaghetti Western guitar and musical saw all drift through the music’s disjointed landscapes, weaving a spell that…
