I wasn’t a fan of the band The Fray previously; definitely not enough to attend the has-been-celebration that was called the Tempe Music Festival a couple weekends back. I don’t remember all of the acts that were playing, but I know that The Fray was amongst few contemporary artists. The…
Although we have a pretty vibrant, poppin’ music scene here in the ‘Nix these days, not that many folks outside of our desert metropolis seem to recognize that. So I was stoked when I found out that Truxton Records rockabilly/psychometal act Grave Danger has a song featured in the new…
Saturday night I missed the CD release party for Runaway Diamonds album God’s Mom and Her Turquoise Chow-Chow, which my fellow scribbler Ed Masley wrote about here, because I was at the Yucca Tap Room scoping out the Drunken Immortals (two of whom are also in this week’s issue, in…
Wednesday for happy hour I spent a couple of hours watching Chip Hanna play acoustic at Last Exit. If you’re not familiar with Chip, he’s the former drummer for punk stalwarts U.S. Bombs and One Man Army, but currently he’s honing his chops as a country singer/songwriter. That might seem…
Mesa may not be known for a totally bumpin’ night life, but when we heard about “Sound in the Ground: Jelly/Belly” on Thursday, March 29 at Mesa Contemporary Arts, we thought it might be worth checking out — especially because Mesa Arts Center is one of the most sleek and…
Back in the late ’90s, I was getting pretty tired of Drunken Immortals — the group was playing a weekly hip-hop night at the now-shuttered Arizona Roadhouse Brewery and, after that, weekly at a place called Donny Brasco’s. I’ve always believed in the laws of supply and demand as far…
Dark Star Orchestra is as close to the Grateful Dead as you’ll get these days, but don’t think of them as a tribute band. No member tries to look like any of the Dead. There’s no effort to talk like them, either. Instead, the DSO picks a different Dead show…
Few artists have spoken more eloquently — or more passionately — about the high cost of life during wartime since Bush took the wheel as commander in chief than indie-punk hero Ted Leo. On his latest effort, Living With the Living, Leo sizes up the prospects of a soldier’s life…
She’s been part of The Spirit Squad, Runaway Diamonds’ life-affirming wall of vocals, for nearly a year now. But when people ask Rhianna Riggs what the Phoenix band sounds like, she has no idea what to tell them. “You’re just like ‘Well, Gabriel plays the beat machine and piano and…
Axel Willner’s debut album stutters so much, sometimes it’s as if the speakers will wobble off the table’s edge and crash to the floor in pieces. As The Field, Willner casts his ubiquitous, reliable software looping techniques in a frequently satisfying light on From Here We Go Sublime, one of…
“I’ll await you, while you’re cheating/lightning strikes you when you’re moving,” sings Blonde Redhead frontwoman Kazu Mikino, whose vocals float atop rhythmic looping riffs in “The Dress,” as she delves into loving-you-less and proves that early-’90s dreamy art-rock can still survive in today’s power-pop-oriented world. The album’s title track opens…
West Coast electro-shoegaze outfit Languis took its already compelling sound to towering heights last year on the mysterious, electronically enhanced stoner pop of Other Desert Cities. For Split, their shared platform with Bay Area leftfield hip-hop duo Meanest Man Contest, Languis apparently developed the medicated-drone end of what comes out…
A recurring problem with many Americana/neo-roots-music performers can be summed up thusly: Terminal Earnestness, an affliction that compels a songster to prove how salt-of-the-earth “authentic” s/he is, no matter what graduate program they recently opted out of. Of course, some take the opposite (though equally tedious) tack of Excessive Irreverence,…
This band named its latest effort The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me. And it sounds like the devil is getting all the better punches in as Jesse Lacey leads Brand New through moments as explosive as the chorus hook of “Sowing Season,” howling “Yeah” as though the word…
November 2000: With filming on the multimillion-dollar Lord of the Rings trilogy almost complete, New Line Cinema’s mercenary cavalry teams silently scour the moors and mountain peaks of New Zealand in a desperate search for the three experimental vat-grown hobbits who have escaped the top-secret holding pen. Raised on a…
Combining the dulcet tones of the Beach Boys with melodies so infectious the Beatles might turn green with envy, The Shins typify what’s right with early 21st-century pop music. This is not Clear Channel’s contrived cookie-cutter pop. This is indie pop, complete with ’80s nods, country flourishes, and truly clever…
They were able to sell more than five million copies of their bottom-shaking, New Wave-flavored debut, Hot Fuss. But the Killers clearly learned a thing or two about playing the long odds in their Vegas stomping grounds, returning last October with a second effort, Sam’s Town, that, surprisingly, owes less…
Although he’s already won a Grammy, remixed such folks as Madonna and the Rolling Stones, and sold out dance clubs around the world, superstar spinster Ali Shirazinia (a.k.a. Dubfire) ain’t about to rest on his laurels just yet. The Iranian-born turntablist, who serves as one half of DJ duo Deep…
Thursday 5 Axis/Radius: Ladies’ Night (hip-hop, rock, dance) Blue Note: DJ Soloman, & Fredj (acid jazz, trip-hop, house) Bunkhouse: DJ Doom (dance) Club Vibe: DJ D’Anthony (hip-hop) Coyote Hill: DJ G-zus (Top 40, hip-hop) Dos Gringos – Tempe: DJ Steel (rock, hip-hop) Hard Rock Cafe: Skandilis (hip-hop, R&B, Latin) Hollywood…
Fu Manchu’s King of the Road was a modern-day stoner-rock classic, kicking off the new millennium with a shit-eating grin that said “Maybe we’re joking and maybe we’re not, but either way you will be rocked beyond all recognition by the time we’re through.” And get this: Nearly every song…
Just got my hands on this new video from Back Ted N-Ted, it’s a collaboration by Coppé and Back Ted N-Ted, and it’s pretty awesome. It was done by Tokyo’s Ben Sheppee, who also directed the video I posted a while back here of Back Ted N-Ted with Chronic Future’s…
Last weekend’s Casket Life/Liar’s Handshake/The Revenge show at the Yucca was completely out of control, just like I expected. It was the first time I’d seen the Revenge before, and goddamn do they bring the punk rock. Homeboy was swinging from the PA’s mounted to the ceiling, the guitar player…
