Like most guys in high school band, the members of Skavoovie and the Epitones didn’t have dates for their junior prom. But it wasn’t because they played tuba or marched around in ill-fitting uniforms with caps and ornamental braiding. Instead, they were too busy with a gig as the evening’s…

Cibo Matto Stereo Type A (Warner Bros.) The latest serving from Cibo Matto has a tough meal to follow. The band’s debut, 1996’s Viva! La Woman, was a smorgasbord of wonderfully twisted hip-hop for the Food Channel set: selections included “Apple,” “Beef Jerky,” “White Pepper Ice Cream” and a cover…

Argan South Moroccan Motor Berber (Barbarity) I know that a lot of you have been burned by world music: You’ve picked up a supposedly catchy album after reading a rave review by a writer with a couple of tattered tour guides and a vocabulary with a glandular condition only to…

Jeff Holland, Nathan Jantz and Dave Alexander are computer experts with enough collective know-how to bring the Pentagon’s systems administrator to his knees. But even though the three are more interested in making electronic music than in committing cyber-terrorism, there’s still a subversive element to their work. The pieces they…

Nancy Wilson Live at McCabes Guitar Shop (Epic) Which one was the dog and which one was the butterfly? And how come there wasn’t a pony? Nancy Wilson (dog, I’m guessing) flies solo on this go-round, a live, unplugged, “nakedly human” collection of Seventies classics, four (and twenty blackbird) cover…

Joey McIntyre Stay the Same (C2 Records) If you needed any more proof that musical cycles are swirling faster than ever before, look no further than Joey (formerly Joe) McIntyre. This scrumpdillyicious hunkaroo was part of New Kids on the Block, which captivated the nearly pubescent crowd between 1988 and…

“You know what it is about our band?” asks Marq Lyn, vocalist for the Slackers, a New York City-based ska act. “We have the be-humble-and-shut-the-fuck-up policy. If anything slightly good happens to us, that makes our day. If someone gives us half a peanut butter sandwich, that makes our day.”…

TLC FanMail (La Face) Production is often used as a coat of paint that’s slapped on to disguise the inferiority of the song beneath it; scrape it off, and what’s left can be mighty frightening. But on other occasions (like this one), unfathomably expensive studio techniques can have a fascination…

Various Artists Porn to Rock (Callner Music) Sex-O-Rama 2 Classic Adult Film Music (Oglio) Savvy music fans are right to be skeptical of gimmicky projects like Porn to Rock and Sex-O-Rama 2, two new albums that bank heavily on the public’s growing penchant for porn. But in their own way,…

Teletubbies Teletubbies: The Album (Kid Rhino) Although I’d heard that Teletubbies, a British children’s series that’s been exported to the colonies, was the closest thing to an acid trip currently available on the tube, I disregarded such talk as postmodern exaggeration. But one day while I was home sick, I…

Fat Boy Slim You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby (Astralwerks) Fat Boy Slim On the Floor of the Boutique (Skint) Norman Cook, aka Fat Boy Slim, certainly has come a long way. After trading in his bass guitar (remember the Housemartins?) for a pair of turntables, he quickly rose through…

Jewel Spirit (Atlantic) In the current edition of Rolling Stone, journalist Neil Strauss tries to portray Jewel Kilcher, who appears on the issue’s cover, as a far more complex personality than the one who seems to be behind her music–not a thimble-deep hippie chick who’s peddling the hoariest of cliches,…

Liz Phair Whitechocolatespaceegg (Matador) To set the record straight: Liz Phair (who headlines the Ogden Theatre on Sunday, November 22) was never my blow-job queen. That white upper-middle-class girls wanna get freaky and then dissect their conquests after the fact was hardly a titillating discovery. Nonetheless, Phair still struck me…

Bob Mould The Last Dog and Pony Show (Rykodisc) With enough sweet hooks to gaff a pod of whales, The Last Dog and Pony Show delivers everything that a clever record should. Unlike Peter Murphy and Morrissey, two other cutting-edge lead singers whose work since leaving their groundbreaking Eighties groups…

Low owL remix (Caroline) Songs for a Dead Pilot (Kranky) The three ultra-minimalists in Low (who appear with the Czars at the Bluebird Theater on October 26) are known for music that’s the sonic equivalent of a horse tranquilizer, albeit one with an overtly melodic and stately grace. Acres of…

“I studied the American language program at Columbia University and was planning on becoming an English teacher,” says Alpha Blondy, who was born in Timbokro, on the African Ivory Coast. Blondy never accomplished this goal; instead, he became one of the world’s most successful reggae stars. But he still uses…

Beastie Boys Hello Nasty (Grand Royal/Capitol) The key development in the life of this great American band came in 1989, when Mike Diamond, Adam Horovitz and Adam Yauch followed up their crunchy goof of a breakthrough platter, 1986’s Licensed to Ill, with Paul’s Boutique, an infinitely more forward-looking melange of…

Alex Desert isn’t really a swinger; he just played one in the movies. Many fans know the 28-year-old singer less for fronting the first-rate Los Angeles ska band called Hepcat than for his role in Swingers, actor/director Jon Favreau’s 1996 cult hit about the L.A. swing scene. But Desert (pronounced…

Tricky Angels With Dirty Faces (Island) Here’s a lesson in artistic credibility. Ever since the release of 1995’s Maxinquaye, which is among the best and most influential albums to pop up this decade, Tricky has been on a creative roll, but the tenebrous nature of his work has prevented it…

DJ Cam The Beat Assassinated (Globetrotter/Sony Music International) Throughout last year’s Mad Blunted Jazz, DJ Cam conjured up hip-hop revelations on the DJ Shadow tip–meaning that he dispensed with lyrical excursions in order to explore the instrumental and orchestral possibilities of mixing and sampling. But although this approach was artistically…

Ani DiFranco Little Plastic Castle (Righteous Babe) One of my colleagues suggested that DiFranco is better than most of her Lilith Fair peers because she says “fuck” a lot more frequently than they do–and after a moment’s reflection, I realized that there’s something to that. A great many of today’s…

Ani DiFranco Little Plastic Castle (Righteous Babe) One of my colleagues suggested that DiFranco is better than most of her Lilith Fair peers because she says “fuck” a lot more frequently than they do–and after a moment’s reflection, I realized that there’s something to that. A great many of today’s…