Six years after forming and three years after exploding onto the scene, Rose Hill Drive has finally issued its debut full-length. Similar to the way that Ford has retrofitted the new Mustangs to recall the classic look of the fastback coupes, Rose Hill Drive is a riff-driven throwback to the…

Move over, Potcheen Folk Band. Waking Rothko, a band that’s been together only since January, has devised one of the most innovative marketing tactics I’ve seen since Potcheen’s booze cruise. Last week, Rothko delivered copies of its debut platter, ep1, to everyone in the Westword office except me, with this…

If misspelling Shudder to Think’s name in my Jeremy Enigk piece a few weeks ago wasn’t enough to get my hipster credentials revoked, this ought to do the trick: I’m developing an affinity for country music. And I’m not talking about the classics (you know: Hank, Buck, Merle, Waylon, George,…

Aubrey Collins is relieved. At least that’s what I’m guessing, since I haven’t been able to speak with the affable chanteuse since her elimination last week from The One: Making a Music Star. While I’m sure Collins would like to weigh in about her time at the prime-time academy, ABC…

Steve Henrickson would be proud of his kid sister. If he could hear the stunningly evocative singer-songwriter she’s become, he’d recognize that she’s somehow overcome that dark day in September 1991 when he took his own life. He’d see that she’s channeled all the heartache of her 26 years into…

Just when you’re really getting into an act, it often seems to go the way of the dodo. A little more than a month after it was profiled in these pages, Kronow, a band that had gathered serious momentum in recent years and looked on the verge of breaking through,…

I’ve had a bad day. Actually, this particular “Bad Day” has lasted more than five months, repeating over and over and over again, like Groundhog Day. It started back in February, when I was flying to Los Angeles on a plane that had those little TVs installed on the backs…

It’s impossible to overstate Jeremy Enigk’s influence on indie rock over the past decade. Sunny Day Real Estate, the Seattle-based quartet he fronted, was at the vanguard of the mid-’90s emo scene, inspiring countless disciples. With a sound that took the intensity of hardcore and infused it with soaring melodies,…

Last week I had the great misfortune of suffering through the first two episodes of The One: Making a Music Star, which is well on its way to becoming reality television’s Ishtar. A mutant hybrid of American Idol (natch) and Making the Band that pits eleven contenders against each other…

Last night, the Fray appeared on the Tonight Show for the second time in six months — and just a week after the band was featured on the Late Show with David Letterman. The Fray played “How to Save a Life” — the title track from its debut — with…

Last month I profiled Dan Rutherford and Morning After Records, which had just partnered with Island Records (Beatdown, June 15). Although Rutherford’s young company is one of the area’s most high-profile, it’s far from the only locally based label. Here are a half-dozen more homegrown imprints putting out quality releases:…

What’s not to love about DeVotchKa? To hear its songs even once is to fall hopelessly, head over heels in love. With what, you ask? Anything and anyone within earshot, as the music makes the most mundane things seem worthy of romanticizing. Even when the band is covering other people’s…

It’s just after 7 p.m. on a soggy Friday night, and I’m sitting at a table on a flagstone patio outside of Shooting Star Cafe, enjoying a brief reprieve from the rain and waiting for the members of Uncle Zant to finish setting up their gear. I’m also thumbing through…

Liza Oxnard could give Norah Jones a run for her money any day of the week. Straight out of the People’s Republic, the erstwhile Zuba frontwoman and new mother has a bewitching voice that’s easier on the ears than Katherine Heigl is on the eyes. Make no mistake, though: Liza,…

The transformation of No Fair Fights has been absolutely stunning. Just two years ago, the group was churning out mediocre, cookie-cutter pop punk. But the outfit’s musicianship has taken a quantum leap since then, and its latest effort, a self-titled, seven-song affair, is killer from start to finish. The prog-inflected,…

Thom Yorke’s first individual outing is about what you’d expect — a glitchy, primarily electronic excursion that mirrors Radiohead’s most recent work. The Eraser’s dour compositions conjure the icy, detached vibe of Kid A and Amnesiac, and were it not for Yorke’s beguiling melodies and consistently compelling fey falsetto, it…

King Rat has been an ongoing concern for Luke Schmaltz for the better part of eleven years. During this time, despite numerous personnel shifts, he’s remained unapologetically faithful to a gritty, no-frills gutter-punk approach that pays homage to booze and broads while evoking a sound made famous by Mike Ness…

He’s baaaack! Except for sporadic performances with the hip-hop combo Dos Locos, Chris Dellinger has kept a low musical profile since his last outfit, Blister 66, became worm food. So what’s the dude been doing? Besides slowly destroying his liver (all the times I’ve run into the charismatic frontman over…

Maybe it was the complimentary Coors everyone was sucking down. Or perhaps it was the savory slabs of roast beef and turkey that folks were shoving into their gullets. Ultimately, I wasn’t sure exactly what had put everyone in such high, ahem, spirits this past Monday night at the twelfth…

When I was growing up, my folks would take me to a restaurant called the Royal Fork. It was a smorgasbord — or borgasmorg, as my dad called it — and definitely a godsend for a portly kid like yours truly. My parents just had to shell out a meager…

Dan Rutherford looks like the cat who just ate the canary, like he knows something no one else does. He’s had this look for a few months, ever since he returned from South by Southwest at the end of March. Now it’s a blistering hot afternoon in early June. Rutherford…