Alejandro Escovedo hasn’t had it easy: His first wife committed suicide; his excellent, critically praised discs haven’t set any charts afire; and he battled a recent bout of hepatitis without the support of health insurance. So you might expect his first release since 2002’s By the Hand of the Father…
“Polished” and “punk” are musical adjectives that don’t always mix. Buff away the rough edges from good punk, and you can easily end up with soulless quasi-pop. It takes a lot of care to produce aesthetically pleasing punk without sacrificing its unkempt side, but the Agency pulls it off nicely…
The one thing in short supply in good roadhouse music is humor. But there’s no such lack on the debut CD from local twang-bangers the Calf Branders. The boys open Good Enuff!? with their very own theme song, which pays tribute to everything from the group’s infrequent rehearsals to its…
Barry Adamson, Stranger on the Sofa (Central Control). Ex-Magazine/Bad Seed bassist turned composer Barry Adamson aborts much of the film-noir-inspired aesthetic that made 1989’s paranoid masterpiece Moss Side Story the template for every U.K. trip-hop outfit from Portishead to Tricky. Still evoking movies of the mind, Adamson juggles jazz, spoken…
If you’ve been racing down local dirt roads in your pickup, jamming to Toby Keith or Gretchen Wilson, then you should probably skip this week’s Hank III concert. Plastering a Confederate flag in your back window might buy you a redneck pass (and hopefully a good ass-whuppin’), but it doesn’t…
Way back in 1973, Rolling Stone ran a cover story declaring that the Grateful Dead had become “corporate.” Indeed, over the years, the Dead and its extended family became a massive financial juggernaut — even if the members of the group essentially remained filthy hippies. And suffice it to say…
There’s a right way and a wrong way to add violin to a rock band, and if you put Oakland’s Heavenly States to the test, they’d surely pass. For one thing, violinist Genevieve Gagon mixes things up with piano and synthesizer on many of the songs, but the fact that…
When many people think of folk music, they envision acoustic-guitar-wielding mopes who pick at their fractured relationships like apes searching for ticks. In truth, the style is as big as the planet, and if Jolie Holland hasn’t explored every square inch of this creative territory to date, give her time…
His name isn’t really Elvis Costello. The London-born iconic pop figure popped out of the womb christened with the desperately un-romantic and very un-rock-star handle of Declan Patrick MacManus. The young MacManus outgrew his given appellation by his early twenties and adopted the combined names of Elvis (straight from the…
Remember Sonic Youth? Really, how could anyone forget? Those inciters of noise-heavy rhythms, those provocateurs of alt-rock exploitation — Sonic Youth, oh, how we hold a tiny place in our grunge-begotten hearts for thee. More than two decades on, the Youth troupe has managed to stay afloat through the turbulent…
Ex-matchbox twenty frontman Rob Thomas is an inspiration to average musicians everywhere. Check the facts: He’s not overwhelmingly handsome, he doesn’t have an especially compelling personality, his voice falls well short of spectacular, and his songs are nearly as generic as his name — yet the guy’s a platinum-selling star…
Rogue Wave’s debut, 2004’s Out of the Shadows, was a bittersweet album of ’60s-inspired pop ideal for melodists and English Lit students who had gone too long between Shins albums. It was the work of one man — Oakland’s Zach Rogue (born Zach Schwartz), who recorded the album before even…
Since its formation in 1999, the Colorado Art Rock Society has consistently presented some of the most inventive local and national music in the state. The Jama-Sonique debuted in 2004 and featured the best in local prog-rock bands, providing a great creative atmosphere and, for good measure, a man in…
If you believe what all the big electronic magazines say about Ferry Corsten (due at the Church on Thursday, June 22), then you might think he’s just another in a series of untouchable superstar DJs from the U.K. Although the label may be accurate, it’s also a bit disingenuous. It’s…
Welcome to the twelfth annual Westword Music Showcase. Twelve — the dirty dozen. Can you believe it? When we launched the first Showcase all those years ago on a rainy Sunday night in LoDo, who would’ve thought that it would grow to such a mammoth event? Then again, did anyone…
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…
Whether she’s singing through speakers or in the footlights of the stage, or talking on the other end of a telephone, there’s a certain distance in Aimee Mann’s voice that makes her sound a million miles away. Especially today, while she’s on break from an L.A. recording session for an…
Dave Einmo, the main mind behind Seattle’s Head Like a Kite, is parked on the shoulder of Interstate 90 in rural Montana, and no matter where he moves inside his vehicle, he can’t get decent cell-phone reception. So he steps onto the roadside and is immediately transfixed. “Wow,” he says…
Before launching a singer-songwriter career, Virgil Shaw co-helmed San Francisco’s Dieselhed in the early ’90s with members of Camper Van Beethoven and Mr. Bungle — a freewheeling union that produced a few notable punk-and-country-tinged albums for Beck’s Bong Load Records. Now residing in Manhattan’s East Village, Shaw pays the bills…
Oops, Liars did it again: The trio made a concept record. Actually, it’s probably more accurate to say that they made an album and then wrapped a concept around it. At its core, Drum’s Not Dead, released earlier this year on Mute, is a winding rock voyage that maps the…
Three years ago last week, when I became the Backbeat editor of this hallowed fish wrap, I was convinced that I had landed the coolest gig in the music biz, bar none. But now I’m not so sure. After speaking with Alexandra Patsavas, who handles music-supervision duties for such shows…
Drag the River ain’t your grandpappy’s country — unless your grandpappy used to stitch Op Ivy patches to his hoodies and rock out in prominent local punk bands. Then, yeah, this is that old-timer’s kind of groove. The Fort Collins-based outfit boasts a lineup of luminaries that reads like an…
