Like his contemporary Townes Van Zandt, Loudon Wainwright III comes from a wealthy and blue-blooded family — but he spit out the upper crust in the late ’60s to embrace the everyman poetics of folk music. Since then, the course of his career has jackknifed all over the place, from…
It’s been a few years since the world has heard Bob Schneider — on an album, at least. The clubs are another story. Schneider may be one of the hardest-working men in the music biz. And that should work in his favor, because it takes seeing the guy live to…
It’s pretty funny that one of the best Saddle Creek releases in recent memory isn’t even on Saddle Creek. The lauded Nebraska label is, of course, home to Bright Eyes, the Good Life and the defunct Desaparecidos — three acts that ’89 Cubs draw members from. But the Cubs’ debut,…
Bobby-soxers, beware: The Lettermen are back, serenading audiences with sentimental favorites in their sweet, sanguine style, a combination of cable-knit harmonies and cashmere vocals that’s made women swoon for more than four decades. Over the years, as members left and were replaced, the group’s popularity continued, and if some of…
Few local bands explode out of your stereo the first time you slap their discs in — especially if they’re as new as Le Boom. But even though the foursome has only been extant for a few months, its members have been around the block, and then some: Bassist/singer Maylyn…
New York, Detroit and Chicago are usually credited as birthplaces of modern dance music, but the sounds coming from Miami over the course of the past decade have done just as much to shape the culture. Take, for example, the output of Miami’s Edgar V, who is slated to make…
Pyramid scheme: Faithful fans — and a few DJs — were left out in the cold this month when they discovered that Club Ra and Pharoah’s Lounge, Egyptian-themed sibling venues at 1111 Lincoln Street, had both closed. Longtime Ra resident Devonte Luv heard the news just days after spinning his…
It’s cold, the sky is spitting rain, and I’m driving a dead man’s car across Texas to see Chin Up Chin Up. The Chicago quintet is playing tonight in Denton, north of Dallas, and since I just spent Thanksgiving with my girlfriend’s family in San Antonio, I figured I’d trek…
Some of the nearly forty holiday discs critiqued below are naughty. Some are nice. And some are as toxic as Aunt Matilda’s fruitcake. As usual, plenty of celebrities are looking to pad their bank accounts via Christmas recordings, and few appear to have broken a sweat while making them. Jessica…
Once upon a time, Bob Seger urged, “Get out of Denver, baby, go, go.” And for many years, if you were a musician in this town, that exhortation would have seemed sage. Today, though, the words sound hollow. Because right now, it’s all about Mootown. Don’t be surprised if a…
Gee whiz, is it Christmastime already? What’s that? I’m sorry: It’s hard to hear you over the sounds of cash registers clanging. Oh, what prompted Jay-Z and Linkin Park to unleash this ill-conceived collaboration upon the masses, you ask? Why, to milk their hardcore fans, of course. Because those are…
When stars who rose to fame in bands toss out a solo album, the music they make on their own often drips with pretentiousness. So it comes as a legitimate relief to discover that the grandest personal statement on Love, Angel, Music, Baby, Gwen Stefani’s inaugural outing, is the “What…
As a self-described introduction to the music of Junior Kimbrough, this tribute album fails spectacularly: These versions of his songs are so radically and haphazardly interpreted that they give only the faintest clue as to what set Kimbrough apart from other such venerated bluesmen. And yet almost every eclectic cut…
At its best, Crunk Juice isn’t so much a recapitulation of Lil Jon’s previous work as an amplification of it. The beats are beatier. The synths are synthier. The screaming is screamier. “It’s the most incredible experience you ever felt in your fuckin’ life!” he declares on the title cut,…
Mike Kinsella must be getting tired. Since he took a detour from Joan of Arc in 1999 to begin recording his own material — first in the group American Football, and now solo, as Owen — the songwriter has quietly constructed a panopticon of doomed emotional scenarios that somehow involve…
Since all reviews are pigeonholing crosshairs, would it help you if the Futureheads were described as barbershop, post-punk, off-Broadway rock? Probably not. The Futureheads love slipped harmonies and jagged riffs that lurch like tennis shoes tied together, ensconced in playfully soot-boxed production. “Alms” has all the rigid diagonals of a…
These days, Radiohead clones are as pervasive as the Nirvanabes that Jammed the airwaves a decade ago. Although Starfuzz admittedly mines the same cerebral region as Yorke & Co., rather than appearing like it suffers from a bad case of The Bends, the act sounds more like Remy Zero with…
Tequila Mockingbird remains a draw on the local club scene eight years after hatching because it’s reliable and accessible. These qualities are unlikely to catapult the quintet to global fame, but they guarantee that Alien-American, the band’s latest full-length, stays catchy and listenable from start to finish. “The Honeymoon” encapsulates…
Having to replace your frontman sucks. But it’s an even more dicey proposition when the man who previously filled the role is seemingly irreplaceable, universally lauded by both critics and fans. Couple that with the fact that his absence is not the result of irreconcilable differences between bandmates — à…
Given how severely the majority of contemporary country music reeks, who can blame Moot Davis for turning back the clock to a time when the genre smelled like roses? Certainly not Pete Anderson, whose work with Dwight Yoakam has earned him the undying gratitude of listeners who consider the watering…
It takes balls the size of Tasmania to impersonate AC/DC, Australia’s most famed musical export and an undeniable rock-and-roll legend. Uh, that is, unless you’re Seattle’s Hell’s Belles — an all-woman AC/DC tribute band that ably salutes all those about to rock. The band came together four years ago, and…
Long before the noodle-ocity of Phish reigned supreme, there was the Fish Head music of the Radiators. In the tradition of the Funky Meters, Little Feat, Allen Toussaint, Earl King and numerous other talented veterans of the Big Easy scene, the Radz emerged from the bayou in 1978 and have…
