Music

Before the Album Leaf’s Jimmy Lavelle started hobnobbing with Sigur Ros, he played in a few little bands in San Diego: the Locust, GoGoGo Airheart, Black Heart Procession and Tristeza. And although Tristeza — minus its superstar since 2003 — has been treading water over the past few years, there’s…

There’s no good reason why New York’s Hem isn’t the biggest band in America. Last year’s Eveningland — with Gary Maurer’s and Dan Messé’s heartbreakingly beautiful songs, Sally Ellyson’s vulnerable-yet-vibrant crooning and a sound so lush you could sink right into it — is still stuck stubbornly in the CD…

How influential is Richard Quitevis, aka Qbert, as a turntablist? Well, he’s often credited with inventing the term — an important and necessary accomplishment, because the old lexicon didn’t contain words that adequately described his distinctive brand of artistry. As a key member of the Invisbl Skratch Piklz, a groundbreaking…

Few Denver bands can boast of having a palindrome for a name — let alone one cooked up at a brainstorming session with Courtney Taylor of the Dandy Warhols. But CAT-A-TAC can. A late-night bender with the Warhols’ notorious frontman a couple of years ago led to the flip-flop-able moniker,…

Ali Shirazinia and Sharam Tayebi, better known as Deep Dish, made their initial mark in the ’90s as deep-house producers and DJs — despite the fact that the two have never aligned themselves with any one specific genre or scene. Although Shirazinia and Tayebi’s productions take on the epic, soulful…

Long-distance relationships suck. Without a constant stream of casual intimacy, the lines strung between lovers start to short-circuit and fray. Phone calls sound forced. E-mails read like laundry lists of halfhearted flirtations. All those Xs and Os begin to cancel each other out. Other people — those who you can…

Denver seems that it’s always trying to legitimize itself as a music town, like, ‘This band will be the one to put Denver on the map,'” says Chris Barber, who runs his own label, Pop Sweatshop, and leads a group called Spiv. “But Denver’s already on the map. I’ve played…

Okay, hands up: Who here hates neo-country? Yeah, me, too. But not everyone detests it. In fact, KYGO — which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year — consistently finishes in the top three in the Abitron ratings. “I set my alarm to it, believe it or not,” confesses local troubadour…

If having your heart ripped out through your eyes, stretched tightly around your head and shoved back in through your ears is your idea of a party, then you’re invited to High on Fire’s next shindig in hell. On Blessed Black Wings, Matt Pike and crew take their neuron-scrambling Motrhead-meets-Clutch-in-Sabbath’s-garage…

Anthony Gonzalez lives in Antibes, France, but if you didn’t know that, you’d swear M83’s mastermind was from fucking Pluto. He’s like the Little Prince, ensconced on his tiny planet of solitude and ice, transmitting the occasional broadcast of bleak atmosphere and barren loveliness. Before the Dawn Heals Us is…

The youngest MTV viewers know Xzibit primarily as the host of Pimp My Ride, in which he comes across as the benign, good-humored benefactor of shitbox autos. Musically, though, his grin turns to grim on a regular basis. Weapons is characteristic of his work: a spare, stern hip-hop foray that…

Strange We Should Meet Here, huh? Not really. After all, you expect a flashy, sassy new band like Idiot Pilot to wake up in bed with a major label. Signed to Reprise right out of the gate, this teenage duo makes moody electro-punk that reeks of self-conscious novelty and haircut…

Soul Coughing fans, rejoice! Music written and performed by Mike Doughty solo is finally available in stores. This two-disc package includes 1996’s stripped-down Skittish and 2003’s Rockity Roll — both previously available only directly from Doughty or your favorite P2P network — along with some live tracks and outtakes. On…

We Americans can be awfully set in our ways. No matter how terrific music from other parts of the globe might be, lots of us like it better when it sounds familiar. Hence these two packages, which aim to make exotic sounds more accessible without destroying what’s cool about them…

Promises are worth about as much as the bullshit they’re written in. Local bands are the worst: They come on all young and passionate but wind up riding their initial spurt of inspiration into the dirt — usually in the form of a lackluster debut. In under a year, Constellations’…

Spinning Pharaoh is apt to give most people a severe sense of dislocation. This particular Project doesn’t seem like something found in Denver, Colorado, during the century most of us presently occupy. Instead, it sounds as if it sprang from an international dance capital in the 1980s, when electronic gadgetry…

Talent in and of itself isn’t a ticket to stardom, but if it’s mixed with a healthy dose of persistence, it can fuel a long and admirable career, as Robert Earl Keen’s experience demonstrates. When record companies proved unwilling to back his first album, 1984’s No Kinda Dancer, he picked…

Robert Schneider has had a year that actually kept up with his head-spinning hyperactivity. Besides releasing 010, the raw, compelling debut by his new group, Ulysses, he recorded a new disc by Marbles, his perennial solo project. Set for release later this month, the expo is a synth-driven, pupil-dilating dose…

A child prodigy who learned piano at age three and cut his teeth professionally at eleven, Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones in 1930) formed several jazz trios throughout the ’50s — back when the quiet and conservative tones of the cool era were evolving from bebop’s radical bombast. A…

From the punk-industrial insurgency of the Beatnigs to the messianic agit-prop of the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Michael Franti has been a relentless enemy of ignorance and bigotry. His outfit of the last ten years, the funk-infused Spearhead, has traveled even further into the realms of groove-locked protest. But this…

Time moves pretty damn fast, no matter what you smoke. For fans of Sublime, the death of Brad Nowell, the trio’s leader, feels like it happened yesterday, but he actually overdosed on heroin in May 1996 — nearly nine years ago. Surviving bandmates Eric Wilson and Bud Gaugh went on…