On the surface, bluegrass seems to have little in common with punk. After all, the former is traditionally acoustic, not electric, and many lineups don’t even include a drummer. Yet because both styles are built for speed, former Wichita rockers Jeff Eaton, Wayne Gottstine, Kirk Rundstrom and Eric Mardis sound…
While his legendary father was forged by the Mississippi Delta, favored one-chord grooves on open-tuned guitars and kept time by constantly stomping his foot, John Lee Hooker Jr. takes a less primitive approach to the blues. Detroit-bred and now residing in Citrus Heights, California, the 52-year-old son of the late…
Genre bands don’t need to sound wildly dissimilar from other groups of their type to stand out from the pack. A few key distinctions are enough, as the men of Clair de Lune understand. Although most of the vivid tunes found on Marionettes, released this past June under the Deep…
While nu-punk bands are proliferating like maggots nowadays, few of them burrow very deep into the genre’s tradition. But England’s the Fight does — as evidenced by Nothing New Since Rock N’ Roll, the group’s 2004 debut full-length. While its previous EP on Fat Wreck Chords — Home Is Where…
The best mainstream acts can accomplish a couple of important tasks along the road to success: Their members become skilled enough to effectively emulate their heroes, after which they fuse their influences into a sound that’s truly their own. Judging by Last of the Cellophane, a full-length whose arrival is…
Judge Jules is a DJ whose involvement in dance music extends far beyond the role of a “superstar DJ.” Since his humble beginnings in 1987, he’s left his stamp on just about every possible facet of the dance-music culture: He’s hosted shows on Radio 1, contributed to many of the…
I used to work at a preschool, and when the kids would get mad at me, they’d say, ‘You’re not my friend anymore,'” remembers Sara Thurston with a laugh. “I just told them, ‘That’s okay. I’ve got plenty of friends already.'” Thurston — better known in Denver as DJ Sara…
Although singer-guitarist Dean Wareham and the other members of Luna agreed that bringing their moody, evocative group to an end after twelve years was the right thing to do, they weren’t sure whether they should make an announcement before touring in support of their seventh studio long-player, last year’s gorgeous…
Last week, as I watched the latest excruciating installment of American Idol, I noticed a common thread in each wannabe’s performance. One after another, these hopefuls defiantly proclaimed that their friends and family had assured them they had amazing voices. All evidence to the contrary. That clinically insane broad from…
Knuckle Down comes with a precious, fancy-papered chapbook stapled into the middle of it. Filled with bare lyrics and even barer pencil sketches, it’s the perfect manifestation of everything that sucks about Ani DiFranco: pseudo-literary pretension, coffeehouse glibness and the false impression that she’s some kind of grassroots underdog rather…
Genius rarely runs in the family. Jakob Dylan can’t hold a candle to his dad’s work without going up in flames, and it’s best not to even think about Wilson Phillips. Fortunately, the daughter of Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle is an anomaly. Martha Wainwright plays unique, captivating, rock-ous…
You’d have a hard time finding a link between the abrasively lysergic Comets on Fire and the sinisterly ambient Current 93. But over the last year, Ben Chasny has joined both bands — and that makes a weird sort of sense, seeing as how his main gig, Six Organs of…
Dr. Dre has discovered a foolproof method for creating superstars. First he casts an unknown with the right profile — in this case, Jayceon Taylor, who hails from Compton (the hood with Attitude!), used to deal (dope!) and has been shot five times (hit the charts with a bullet!). Then…
Why are adolescent R&B specialists generally more tolerable than their pop-tart counterparts? Because performers like Mario, a teen who’s already received Clive Davis’s stamp of approval, are encouraged to broaden their music’s appeal rather than focus it on the demographic whose members still wistfully fantasize about their first pubic hair…
Dissonance trumps exotica when Quintron, New Orleans’s favorite ninth-ward inventor and one-man lounge act, further explores the sounds made possible through cheap, modified tube organs. And if that’s not enough, the “Amazing Spellcaster” also busts out his drum buddy — a hand-built device that transforms rhythmic light-exposure patterns into percussion…
While difficult to hang a genre on this coaster, it’s hard not to like the musical product of James Brown axman Damon Wood and company. Wood struts his road-tested guitar stuff on Space Cadet and demonstrates creative songwriting ability from track to track, weaving funk, blues, reggae, soul and psychedelia…
New Jersey transplant Dave Lichtenberg, the bundle of nerves behind “I Want an Ugly Girl” and “Useless Shit,” has always performed under his alter ego with the spaz meter running full throttle. Still, extolling life at the bottom, where it’s just as lonely, Little Fyodor presents a live album that…
A friend recently dismissed Bowling for Soup (below) with the sneering comment “They’re punk rock for girls” — by which he meant preteen girls, the kind who pretend they don’t dig JoJo, even though they do, and think Eminem’s “Mockingbird” is the most searing personal statement ever committed to plastic…
When Michael Shepard sings, even broken legs sound beautiful. His is a boyish lilt that could float on water. At times the Lovedrug frontman’s voice quivers like a toddler’s upper lip; at others it sounds like a daydream becoming a nightmare. Shepard is the entry point to Lovedrug’s pretty, progressive…
The Wrens’ “Authorized Biography (of Sorts),” accessible at www.wrens.com, tells the kind of music-biz story that’s hilarious to anyone who didn’t live through it. New Jersey-based comrades Greg and Kevin Whelan, Charles Bissell and Jerry MacDonnell enjoyed recording for tiny Grass Records until the label was purchased by Alan Meltzer,…
Scores of independent labels succumbed to the ska implosion of the late ’90s. Asian Man Records — one of the most visible and successful proponents of third-wave ska — was one of the fortunate few. But luck isn’t the only reason Asian Man’s owner, Mike Park, is a survivor; the…
“Fuckin’ A” may be the most wonderfully ridiculous expletive around these days. Is it self-censorship of that unutterable “A”? And what the hell is the “A,” anyhow? Perplexing. But given that the Thermals may be the most wonderfully ridiculous punk-rockers around these days, it’s fitting that the act’s latest record,…
