If A Tribe Called Quest had jettisoned the bong-jazz flow and picked up where Afrika Bambaataa left off, the group would have created something like the simultaneously amped-up and chilled-out atmosphere of the debut by Baltimore duo Spank Rock. Naeem Juwan doesn’t blaze any trails with his booty-call braggart lyrics,…

For somebody who just got his teeth knocked out, Mike Damron looks no worse for wear. In fact, aside from slightly chipmunked cheeks, you’d never know the frontman of I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch in the House had just had his wisdom teeth pulled a few hours earlier. Damron is…

The past few years have seen a thawing of indie disdain toward dance music; rock shows that used to be domino rows of the stylishly dead now reveal vaguely coordinated twitches of life. Kudu is the latest act in a loose lasso that includes everyone from Peaches to the Rapture…

I’d always wondered why Gang of Four (a band I like) would have an inspirational shelf life longer than that of, say, the Supremes or James Brown. Though the neo-soul movement tried to marry the soul tradition to hip-hop, until recently, few people seemed to directly revisit the prematurely extinct…

Electronics are the new orchestras, at least insofar as they allow a standard three-piece like Slow Runner to fold in layers of interior and pockets of depth that only studious listening can completely excavate. Michael Flynn articulates with Rufus Wainwright weight on every phrase, a romantic bit of overkill that…

Montreal’s Stars have been living a couple of jackpot years. Crashing stateside with the wave of “collective” bands from the Great White North (including neighborhood chums Broken Social Scene), the five-piece has managed to make the heavy-rotation list on Adam Brody’s iPod and collect a broad constellation of accolades and…

You might recognize Lisa Shaw’s voice as the Lexus of deep-house divas, a staple collaborator for the artists of Naked Music, a label that specializes in tripped-out soul music, downtempo grooves with a Millie Jackson flavor. Shaw is like the Stephanie Mills for a generation of Portishead fans, where the…

Keeping up with Sinéad O’Connor’s existential contortions is a bit like chasing dandelion fuzz in a hurricane. Artistically, this latest proclamation of Rastafarianism at least does her a good musical turn, even if it contributes to her reputation as someone who picks religions by plucking “God loves me/God loves me…

Who doesn’t want to root for the solo outing of rock’s deadpan ghoul of ’80s cool? Nexterday’s opening track, “Crackpot,” with its pelvic, ground-down guitar and Ocasek’s trademark throat-caught strut, sounds damn near sexy, even with a respirator for its backing track. Sadly, that anthemic potential evaporates quickly and quietly…

You have to concede a certain amount of praise automatically for the massive imaginative output in Princess Superstar’s My Machine, a dystopic sci-fi hip-hop concept album about a future celebrity who takes over the world with the help of a cloning machine. As in any good epic, apocalyptic replicant war…

It would be easy to call Coco Rosie’s music an acquired taste. The twisted sisters who make up the group, Bianca and Sierra Casady, sing with miniaturized voices, like Bjrk in jammies, and the music — nursery-rhyme rosaries banged out on toy pianos and spliced with neighing ponies — frequently…

Both the Warlocks and the Raveonettes recently issued records that were buoyed by a Ronettes-like makeover. In the Warlocks’ case, however, it’s more tempting to use kindred spirits the Jesus and Mary Chain to describe the white-hot relaxation of their latest release, Surgery. “Think of ice cream sliding into a…

Mazarin’s We’re Already There hypnotizes with songs built on a bedrock of sculpted noise and drum rhythms that form a snaking maze of syncopation on each track. Lead singer Quentin Stoltzfusike croons with a melodically muffled tenor, sweet and crumbly — like Robyn Hitchcock with all the limey scraped out…

Forget neo-soul: Jamie Lidell resurrects the old school so effortlessly you barely notice that Multiply is essentially a one-man orchestra of expressive electronic splicing and dicing. Wielding a voice that alternates between gruff Otis Redding purrs and tight James Brown breakdowns (with moments of Prince’s pre-Jehovah’s Witness sonic orgasming thrown…

Hand claps, cowbells, sassy horns and “Jumping Jack Flash” rhythms make Less Sophistication the best Summer of Love record not penned by mop-topped limeys in the ’60s. Hailing from the American-garage-rock capital of Scandinavia, the Jessica Fletchers lean heavily on the white-boy soul of the Zombies but aren’t afraid to…

Less Than Human, the latest from James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy’s critically lauded DFA label, finds former Six Finger Satellite member John Maclean taking advantage of the recent decision by indie kids that dance music can play their reindeer games. Human reeks of yesteryear, somewhere between the metallic robotics of…

Getting older and wiser means taking the guilt out of your guilty pleasures. Annie serves up opulent dance pop — all white fur coats and milk served in champagne glasses, the kind of thing you might expect from an unlikely mating of Beyoncé and the Tom Tom Club, or Vanity…

For those who’ve longed for the poetic license of Morrissey crammed into the keyboard-tinted riffs of the Cars, leave it to the limeys to satisfy the demand. Maximo Park has already received panting preemptory praise and A Certain Trigger actually bears out much of that premature ejaculation. “Apply Some Pressure”…

Spoon has always been the best approximation of a Motown indie glam outfit, with songs sprung on hand claps and hooks tucked into every piano riff and acoustic strum. Coupled with the warm nasal scuff of Britt Daniel’s groove-riding turns of phrase, Spoon dishes out literate white-boy soul wrapped in…

Before some dickhead lawyered up, Caribou (Dan Snaith) used to be known as Manitoba, an artist whose debut, Up in Flames, sculpted the soft white noise of My Bloody Valentine into electronic songs with elaborate Escher-like architecture. The Milk of Human Kindness, the act’s latest effort, perpetually evokes construction analogies…

When you realize that South San Gabriel’s new album involves a song cycle about Will Johnson’s cat, it’s easy to get that sinking feeling that record executives must have had when Stevie Wonder delivered a concept album about talking to houseplants. Thankfully, Johnson, who also leads the gruff pack of…

Musical gimmicks are like trying to pass off a dildo as your own equipment: You’re going to have to fuck some pretty stupid people in order to get the last laugh. Edie Sedgwick, aka Justin Moyer, takes his name from a dead debutante who moonlighted as one of Andy Warhol’s…