Music

Logophobia — the fear of words — has taken on all kinds of meanings beyond those of mere pathology: Michel Foucault defined it as angst caused by the capricious nature of language, while Peter Farb considered it an aversion to abstraction itself. And although Denver’s Peña avoids lyrics like the…

After spending years behind the scenes, Tommie Sunshine has stepped into the spotlight and turned dance music on its ear. Although the New York City-based DJ came of age in the Midwestern rave scene, it wasn’t until the electroclash explosion of the new millennium that he really began to make…

“It’s like I’m looking at this spaceship sitting on this tarmac, and we’re all tied together, connected to this cable, and we can hear the countdown. And we’re like, ‘Oh, my God, this thing’s going to pull away and our lives are going to disappear.'” Isaac Slade is reading a…

When singer/guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt pits what he calls his “death voice” against the most brutal backdrop his bandmates can construct, Scandinavia’s Opeth is as fierce as any group on the planet. At other times, though, Åkerfeldt comes across as downright sensitive. Unlike one-dimensional metal maniacs, who compulsively growl about disembowelings…

For Sufjan Stevens, everything goes back to Bigfoot. As a young boy, Stevens was asked to do an oral report on Oregon for a social studies class. While doing his research, he came across a book on the frightening furry phenomenon and decided to incorporate it into his assignment. When…

Green Day who? If Boys Night Out’s Trainwreck is any indication, the new colors of punk-rock opera are black, blue and, above all, blood red. Whereas the Canadian quintet’s deliberately emo-core debut, Make Yourself Sick, dealt with slicing up girlfriends and disposing their parts about the house, the Boys’ followup…

“The words of Woody Guthrie ringing in my head,” sings Jay Farrar on “Bandages & Scars.” So begins Okemah and the Melody of Riot, the eagerly anticipated fourth disc by the renovated Son Volt. Okemah is Guthrie’s Oklahoma birthplace — but Farrar’s former bandmate, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, paid far…

Gravy Train!!!! makes trashy new-wave hip-hop that spazzes out on the infected suture where J.J. Fad and Missing Persons might meet for glory-hole action, replete with singing that sounds like a junkyard-dog quartet. The production value of Are You Wigglin?, the act’s followup to 2003’s Hello Doctor, is just somewhere…

No current genre is less forgiving of the aging process than rap, yet Guru is well positioned to deal with its ravages. His lyrics and delivery were mature long before the term applied to his vintage, and he’s not about to sell out now. As he says in “No Time,”…

Chamber music was conceived as an equation of size, space and intimacy: The smaller the room and ensemble, the more direct and informal the performance. With its debut album, They Have Already Defeated Us at What We Know Best, Strangers Die Everyday has recast the humble chamber quartet in a…

George Strait, Somewhere Down in Texas (MCA). The white-hatted man is still filling discs with casual variations on C&W verities, as he’s done since the early ’80s. Texas is no Hank-n-Merle-style classic, but in comparison to most of the treacle that passes for contemporary country, the disc tastes like fine…

On “I Don’t Buy It,” Patrick Meese asserts, “Every song I make sounds the same to me/ I can’t swallow fake/Give it to me straight.” Granted, each of the songs are decidedly piano-heavy and similar in tone and texture, but rather than undermine the proceedings, they add to the album’s…

Country folks sure like their red dirt. Woody Guthrie practically sanctified the stuff during the dust-bowl era; Emmylou Harris and Brooks & Dunn issued semi-concept albums with Red Dirt Girl and Red Dirt Road, respectively; there’s even a weekly Sunday-night broadcast from Stillwater, Oklahoma’s KVOO called Red Dirt Radio that…

By the time pop punk caught up to the Alkaline Trio (right), the band had already outgrown it, incorporating death-obsessed lyrics and metallic riffs into their evolving sound. While the Alkies’ melodic punk-n-roll fits perfectly on emo standard-bearer Vagrant Records, a goth image and lack of whining set the group…

The notion of forming a band that pays tribute to an extant group might wilt your hemp, but that’s precisely what the plucky lads in Phix did back in 2000. While the guys from the mother band, Phish, hung up their tie-dyes last year (after hosting a muddy and emotional…

Soylent Green, in the sci-fi flick of the same name, was the government-dispensed food product made out of (surprise!) people. Similarly, the music of New Orleans’s Soilent Green could pass for the agonizing crunch of a hundred thousand human corpses being pulped in a mammoth meat grinder. The quintet’s fifth…

Being pals with Jack White can’t hurt one’s musical career. Just ask Brendan Benson, whose recent collaboration with the Raconteurs, White’s latest side project, is being hyped as Detroit’s answer to Nevermind. Back on planet Earth, however, Benson has already enjoyed the erratic career of a self-absorbed singer-songwriter, one who’s…

The late-’90s success of Erykah Badu figuratively opened the door for women who prefer bold, thoughtful R&B to the cleavage-exploiting, azz-shaking approach popularized by lowest-common-denominator hip-hoppers. To date, only a few females have found commercial success by following her example, and maintaining it has proven to be even tougher, as…

The Journey you’re thinking of no longer exists. That Journey — which had Steve Perry singing alongside four guys whose names you probably never knew — is long gone. Of course, Journey existed before Perry, but its first three albums delivered zero hits, which is why manager Herbie Herbert hired…

A quartet masquerading as a trio, Garage A Trois sounds a lot better than it looks on paper. The biggest name in the band is guitarist Charlie Hunter, a legit jazzbo (he’s spent much of his career recording for Blue Note), albeit a notably accessible one. In contrast, saxophonist/keyboardist Skerik,…

The Trampolines formed in February 2004 as an acoustic collaboration between Ordinary Poets’ Mark Sundermeier (left) and Losing November’s Chris Stake. By the following January, after a year of performing as a duo, the Trampolines officially became a full-fledged band, with the addition of former Battery Park keyboardist Todd Davis…