Music

James Blunt’s debut Back to Bedlam was the number-one album in the U.K. last year, catapulting him to superstardom, thanks in large part to the hit “You’re Beautiful.” Go back a few years earlier, and he was a personal guard to the Queen of England — and before that, a…

Back in 2003, reggae crossover star Sean Paul Henriques was fined $34 for cursing on stage at a festival in his native Jamaica. The cost was insignificant, particularly in light of Sean Paul’s stateside success: The Trinity, his latest disc, set a record for most copies of a reggae album…

All hail “Love Rollercoaster,” a sweet slice of funk brought to us by the Ohio Players. There is not enough funk in this world, so we welcome every bite of funk that has been fed to us and every band that cooks it. Oh, Ohio Players, the sins that have…

Before Karen O strutted, spit and cooed her way to indie-rock-icon status, Courtney Love was arguably the last dynamic female to front a rock band. The grunge widow propelled Hole to stardom in the ’90s with her inimitable martyr poses and baby-doll fashion. But Love lost some of her cathartic…

Here’s where we find out how adventurous Wilco fans really are. Kotche may be the band’s percussionist, but he cuts his own path on Mobile, a disc that’s consistently rewarding, if not instantly accessible. The first track, “Clapping Music Variations,” is a case in point. This fascinating adaptation of a…

Like any self-respecting alt-country artist, Neko Case would probably love to leave alt-country behind — along with the negative connotations the term’s overuse has spawned — but the well-deep voice that’s earned her deserved comparisons to Patsy Cline has made it difficult for her to escape the tag. Case was…

The worst thing about grandparents is having to listen to their stories over and over again. Garden Ruin marks Calexico’s tenth anniversary — a century in rock years — and proves that leader Joey Burns might finally be slipping into his songwriting dotage. The band has rehashed every possible element…

Scratching unacknowledged itches, tt Lester makes it seem natural to follow a plucky piano-bar number with a Joy Division dronefest that would put Interpol to shame. Lester’s interests are varied but invariably British. Tony Guerrie spills out sleepily confident vocals similar to those of Blur’s Damon Albarn, and when he…

From dirty socks to Sybian machines, the thrill of autoeroticism finds its way into the weirdest outlets. Johnny Wohlfahrt alone is Nervesandgel, perhaps the most self-indulgent entity the Denver music scene has ever birthed. Recorded across four years and two full discs, his eponymous opus occupies the hitherto hidden space…

Devo 2.0, Devo 2.0 (Walt Disney Records). Cutesy youngsters Nicole, Nathan, Jackie, Michael and Kane “play” allegedly kid-friendly versions of Devo faves on Devo 2.0; for example, “Uncontrollable Urge” is now about snack cravings. So why is the de-satirized “Beautiful World” more twisted than ever? And how did Mark Mothersbaugh…

Gospel does prog like a Sunday-morning church choir doped up on amphetamines and worshiping heretic gods. Brooklyn-based and heaven-sent, the assemblage of vocalist/guitarist Adam Dooling, bassist Sean Miller, keys/guitarist Jon Pastir and drummer Vincent Roseboom can thrash it out with the best of them, but with a dirtiness gleaned from…

Approximately 73 million bands have formed at colleges over the years, and the vast majority of them fall into the rock or pop categories, with a few hip-hop or jazz outfits thrown in for good measure. That makes the Steep Canyon Rangers an anomaly — a bluegrass combo formed in…

Liturgy comes in many shapes, from sacrament to the more prosaic forms of social ritual. Music, of course, is another. Still, few musicians are able to imbue their art with the kind of prescribed circularity that feels revelatory rather than lazy. With her debut full-length, Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom,…

“Can’t sleep with this frustration,” Chimaira frontman Mark Hunter growls midway through his band’s fourth LP, sounding like he hasn’t had a good night’s rest in about two years. And in a way, he hasn’t. After touring for nearly twenty straight months following the release of 2003’s The Impossibility of…

Jacques Brel and Morrissey walk into a bar. As Kurt Weill pours the Maker’s and glasses are raised, Marlene Dietrich pulls up a bar stool. The liquor flows and the conversation percolates. Dietrich is considering a sex change, Brel can’t stop talking about abortions and the Holocaust, and Morrissey keeps…

The word “orchestral” gets dropped every time some cruddy indie-rock band crams a tuba solo or two-part harmony into one of its songs. But few auteurs of underground pop have as much conceptual chutzpah as Dave Longstreth, the nucleus of the Dirty Projectors. Layered with beauty and skewered by weirdness,…

Jason Collett is full of love, with nowhere to go. Like a wandering traveler ill-advised by Cupid, the Canadian-based singer-songwriter is a sentimental sap boarding a one-way train to Bummerville. But Collett’s candy-heart tracks are better fitted as acoustic guitar pop than melodramatic Dashboard hype. Noted for his guitar work…

For those of you who find the paint-by-numbers approach employed by far too many emo bands to be exceedingly dull, here’s some good news: An increasing number of them find it boring, too. Matchbook Romance is a case in point. A quartet from the rock hotbed of Poughkeepsie, New York,…

The December Question has come a long way since forming in 2002. Early on, the band’s acoustic-driven pop was largely centered around singer/guitarist Becky Alter (a former Westword account executive), whose raspy, robust vocals recalled Janis Joplin filtered through Melissa Etheridge. Since then, the core duo of Alter and co-founder/bassist…

Curtis Jones had a lot to do with revitalizing the Chicago house-music scene in the ’90s. As DJ Cajmere, Jones produced vocal house tunes that easily rivaled that of his heroes, the men who built the scene. In an effort to branch out, Jones later adopted the moniker Green Velvet…

Some listeners adore them, and some abhor them — but none can credibly deny that the Strokes have had a significant impact on this decade’s popular-music scene. Is This It, the outfit’s 2001 debut, arrived on a blast of hype powerful enough to blow open mainstream doors that had previously…