The last couple weeks have been sheer torture on the ears. See, this coming weekend I’m turning 30, and in an effort to ensure that I’m not losing touch with what the kids are rocking, I’ve been immersing myself in what may be the most obnoxious genre of music ever:…
The Cold Vein, New York hip-hop duo Cannibal Ox’s 2001 debut, served as a kind of lightning rod in the battle between underground and mainstream hip-hop that’s ravaged the form since approximately 1612. Packed with MCs Vast Aire and Vordul Megilah’s hyper-textual braggadocio and produced by Def Jux honcho El-P,…
While other New York bands write historical fiction based in the smoky barrooms of the New Wave era, French Kicks are engaged in a romantic fantasy that takes place in the studio. Indie music, much less rock in general, is rarely so produced and resolutely hi-fi as The Trial of…
Fifty years from now, when some young rapper’s delivering Eminem’s introduction speech at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, he or she will no doubt celebrate Marshall Mathers’ nearly unparalleled knack for conflating the comedic and the tragic. Maybe the Hall will even screen 8 Mile with a…
Two years ago, Ms. Holland sat in her bedroom with a couple of friends to demo up a couple of sophisticated folk tunes and make a CD she could sell from the edge of the stage at gigs. She called it Catalpa, and her fans quickly began burning copies and…
Cops and white men beware: Dead Prez has secured another record deal and is ready to unleash its onslaught once again. Four years ago, the act’s debut, Let’s Get Free, criticized the government, the school system, the police force and other artists for using music to talk about nonsense. MCs…
For as much sadness and turmoil as there’s been in the Stereolab camp these past couple of years — the death of singer/keyboardist Mary Hansen following a bicycle accident in 2002; the divorce of founding members Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier shortly before — you’d never really know it from…
You’d think Lee Burik, guitarist and co-founder of the San Francisco quintet evening, would have already gotten his fill of meeting people. Not only is he in a buzz band on the cusp of national recognition — which brings around the requisite fans, friends, friends of friends, groupies, hangers-on, stalkers,…
My job just got infinitely more difficult. See, I just got word that Freedom, the dance-music mecca in Tempe, is closing its doors at the end of May. This is a pain in my ass because I write a little feature called “Needle Exchange” spotlighting a different DJ/turntablist performance every…
The electroclash scene isn’t dead yet. Or if it is, then nobody told Felix da Housecat. Once a Chicago house DJ who was huge in Europe and barely noticed in the States, Felix arrived in 2002 with one of nouveau synth-pop’s finest platters, Kittenz and Thee Glitz. And his latest…
Ben Kweller could be America’s answer to Australia’s Ben Lee, who, like Kweller, made news in the ’90s with his teen band (Noise Addict as opposed to Kweller’s Silverchair clone, Radish). He also has a cute, moppish look, and purveys a gentle, slightly goofy, lovelorn lyricism. Except nobody knows who…
As morose and hopeless as ever, indie-rock Jesus-follower David Bazan (the key songwriter and only permanent member of Pedro the Lion) has crafted another stunning, despondent record with Achilles’ Heel. Fairly unique among indie and emo whiners, Bazan is a devout Christian. But rather than preach a clean lifestyle or…
Quannum Projects (originally called Solesides) is like the Paul Masson of hip-hop collectives (“We’ll sell no beats and rhymes before their time”). Fans of the esteemed Bay Area crew know that many moons may pass before its charter members turn out new music: Lyrics Born’s recent Later That Day …
Nobody ever said you’ll get Tempe fans handed to you on a silver platter. That’s what Emily Haines, the keyboard-playing front woman for the indie pop band Metric, found out when her group headlined the annual New Times Music Showcase on Sunday, April 18. Metric’s catchy CD came out last…
The long-vacant, two-story building at 750 Grand Avenue is a former car showroom, and there are rumors it was once owned by Bing Crosby. Now it’s open for business again, but not for auto sales. Instead, the site is home to the new Paper Heart, a multipurpose art and music…
Deerhoof seems to have found relative cohesion on Milk Man, something like the difference between a murky, half-remembered dream and a lucid one. The album makes good on the promise audible but not realized on last year’s Apple O’. Where Apple O’ was experimentally indulgent, Milk Man hangs together as…
I saw an anomaly at a Phoenix hip-hop show recently — a 58-year-old guy onstage playing classic funk 45s — no scratching, no mixing, just one song after another. Two twentysomething DJs, ChaseOne and Smite, stood by John Dixon, better known as Johnny D, nodding to the beat and looking…
Madlib’s Madvillain project is the second of his dream match-ups, following his slightly disappointing pairing last year with Detroit iconoclast Jay Dee (Jaylib’s Champion Sound). While Jay Dee favors original compositions, track-busting Madlib finds more in common with MF Doom, since the latter’s early-’90s work with KMD as Zevlove X…
BR549’s energetic synthesis of Buck Owens and Ernest Tubb started packing ’em in during pass-the-hat gigs at Robert’s Western Wear — a Nashville haberdashery on the wrong side of the tracks — in early 1996. When the band’s self-produced EP Live at Robert’s juiced up the buzz to a deafening…
For a while there, it seemed like Britain’s Squarepusher, a.k.a. Tom Jenkinson, would never show his face around these parts. One full-scale U.S. tour was aborted shortly after its launch, and another was scrapped entirely, all for unspecified reasons. It only added to Jenkinson’s long-standing reputation as a mad IDM/drill…
Ten songs into what was supposed to be a nine-song set, on a lawn between two of Arizona State University’s freshman dorms, Greeley Estates singer Ryan Zimmerman is obviously spent. He keeps spitting behind the PA, trying to clear his throat to finish screaming the lyrics to “Not Alone,” the…
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