Mars Loves Venus, the latest disc by the Brunettes, sounds as American as the Apples in Stereo. The disc’s shiny/happy melodies will strike a familiar (and simple) chord with anyone who’s spent time guzzling domestic indie pop, and the charmingly amateurish vocals by the dark-tressed duo of Heather Mansfield and…
Here’s how much times have changed in the past decade and a half. At the dawn of the ’90s, a Bush was in the White House, and old farts who wanted to pretend that they dug contemporary music would name-drop Lenny Kravitz. Today, in less-than-jarring contrast, a Bush is in…
Denver sometimes has severe amnesia when it comes to local music. Around the turn of the millennium, Acrobat Down was as hotly tipped and downright exciting as Colorado-grown outfits get. But since dissolving in 2001, its members have hovered relatively under the radar: Singer/guitarist Aaron Hobbs just recently assembled a…
At the turn of the century, trance music enjoyed an unchallenged reign in the nation’s clubs — not to mention every tricked-out Acura in LoDo. Thanks to Kimball Collins, there was simply no escaping it. Collins launched his DJ career in 1987, just as rave culture began to sprout roots…
Late last year, artist Michelle Barnes decided it was time to end Exhibition Tuesday, a marriage of high art and bar culture that she’d brought to the Funky Buddha (776 Lincoln Street) one night a week for three years. Nearly 300 painters, designers and illustrators, most of them local, had…
“Sally Field,” a song from the Edie Sedgwick disc Her Love Is Real…But She Is Not, pays tribute to the you-like-me actress’s Oscar-winning performance as a union activist in the 1979 film Norma Rae. Yet Field’s depiction of a woman suffering from multiple-personality disorder in the 1976 telepic Sybil would…
I care a lot about politics,” says Akrobatik, “but I don’t believe in the political process.” The Perceptionists’ MC remembers sitting in a Chinese restaurant in John Kerry’s home town of Boston on Election Day 2004 and being “almost oblivious” to what was going on with what many were calling…
“I don’t want people to think that I’m throwing in the towel,” says Kenton Schawe, aka DJ Nutmeg. “I’m just not going to do it for a living anymore.” Schawe, long a cornerstone of the local house scene, is pulling up stakes and moving to Kona, Hawaii. Faced with losing…
Sam Jayne, leader of Love as Laughter, would have you believe Laughter’s Fifth is a cock-in-fist homage to all that is bluesy, ballsy and cool about classic rock. After all, 2001’s Sea to Shining Sea was exactly that: a greasy scramble of the Who, Skynyrd, Thin Lizzy and Exile on…
Emancipation, my ass. Rather than letting their client display her distinctiveness, the members of the Carey Career Resurrection Braintrust have practically erased any individuality she had left. On Mimi’s cover, she looks less like a person than a hood ornament or a carving on the prow of a ship, and…
According to such dot-com authorities as Pitchfork and Allmusic, Hot Hot Heat’s long-awaited new album is a disappointing lump of crap. Maybe everyone’s just sick of hearing shitty bands that sound like Hot Hot Heat — because it’s hard to find a single serious fault with Elevator. From the double-knotted…
Jim Thirlwell’s musical output is as unpredictable as his identity. With more aliases than Dick Cheney has conflicts of interest, he has recorded thrash, industrial, dance pop and cartoon swing. His latest Foetus record is another diverse collection. The opener, “(Not Adam),” is a dance-floor hit, complete with a sing-along…
Danny Howells’s third Global Underground release is culled from a pair of live performances at Space, in Miami. The first disc is taken from a sunrise set on the venue’s rooftop terrace. A smooth blend of sexy vocals and exotic rhythms, the set builds slowly and, while the high points…
Crediting the Lips above the title of this album is a bit misleading, because the only song by the band among the twenty on hand is an entertaining cover of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.” Yet Tales, part of a series issued by Azuli, provides fans with additional insight…
“We don’t sell starry-eyed schoolboy songs.” So declares Bailer on “Savor Control,” one of the more blatantly anthemic tracks from the group’s new disc, Sing It Like a Victim (whose release will be celebrated Saturday, April 30, at Pancho’s Villa). And that lyric is an apt self-description: With tongues wrapped…
In some ways, acts that attempt to make a first-rate recording in a mainstream style take on a more challenging task than artists who leap into the creative unknown. After all, listeners have probably heard plenty of similar stuff in the past and will be that much harder to impress…
“How many sparrows are inside a cat?/How many cats in a man?/How long can you keep your eyes shut on the interstate?” Boston’s adventurous art-punk outfit Ho-Ag asks plenty of screwball questions on its latest EP, Pray for the Worms, but offers little in the way of easy answers (not…
Electric bassist Victor Wooten seems to suffer from attention deficit disorder. Or so you’d think as you watch him juggling basses, snatching from a gleaming row of four-strings as the moment strikes him. His sound runs the gamut from jazz and bluegrass to rock and funk to classical and rap…
Either Moby (right) has never seen Magnum Force, or he was in the lobby ordering tofu when Clint Eastwood, as Inspector Harry Callahan, delivered one of moviedom’s most trenchant statements: “A man’s got to know his limitations.” The performer born Richard Melville Hall has long chafed at the restrictions of…
The distinction between a riff and a hook is totally lost on most bands scavenging today’s retro-rock wasteland. Detroit’s the Sights not only know the difference, but they synthesize power and pop into a seething, brilliantly infectious mess of rock-and-roll soul. Singer/ guitarist Eddie Baranek formed the trio in the…
The name Nik Freitas doesn’t hold as much weight in the indie-rock community as it does in the skate world. In 1999, the then-twenty-year-old photographer hit the road for Thrasher and spent the next few dozen months documenting the feats of some of the top pro skaters on the planet…
Buzz bands from here, there and everywhere are nicking U.K. sounds, but too many of them are targeting the same period: the early ’80s post-punk days, when it was okay to wear any color as long as it was black, and young men were discovering how much fun they could…
