Music

In conversation, singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt, whose innumerable musical projects include the Magnetic Fields, takes deliberation to extremes. He reacts to most questions with a lengthy pause, and if the phrasing of a query doesn’t meet his standards for precision, he’ll pick it apart like a slightly dyspeptic linguistics professor rather…

Before A.F.I. hit punk pay dirt in 2003 with Sing the Sorrow, the quartet built a bloodthirsty following on Dexter Holland’s Nitro Records. AFI documents the band’s pre-Rolling Stone years with a balanced selection of fifteen of the band’s best early tracks. For longtime fans, there’s little to get frothy…

In the wake of 2002’s Spend the Night, the biggest-selling platter of their career, the Donnas have discovered maturity the way some seekers find religion. The ladies from Palo Alto recently ditched their Ramones-like pseudonyms in favor of their given names and transitioned musically from semi-novelty punkettes to sturdy pros…

Talib Kweli has struggled with finding a way to merge his lyrical gifts with his commercial aspirations. On his latest effort, The Beautiful Struggle, he succeeds with songs like “Ghetto Show” (with Common and Anthony Hamilton), “Black Girl Pain” (with Jean Grae) and the first single, the Kanye West-produced “I…

Beware the prestige project, a creative endeavor in which entertainment values come freighted with Artistic Importance. Such is the lineage of Parade of the Athletes, an album of material that Dutch DJ Tijs Verwest, aka Tisto, created for the opening ceremonies of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. Although the…

Sitting here at the chilling dawn of George W. Bush’s re-election, the politicized whining of a tortured rock star rings pretty impotent and depressing. And yet, on the fateful date of November 2, A Perfect Circle frontman Maynard James Keenan saw fit to shit out Emotive, a self-described “collection of…

Take a trenchantly independent band, throw a major-label budget and a big-name producer on top — and the result is usually total crap. But Le Tigre has been dodging expectations since its inception, and This Island, the group’s third full-length, maintains its steady arc toward dance-pop immortality. With the help…

Talk about a left turn. On Little Rockets, her previous disc (released in 2001), pianist Elea Plotkin sang and performed rock songs described in these pages as “down and dirty.” Such descriptive terms can’t be applied to Classical Dreamscapes, her latest effort, which is being introduced to the public during…

Musicians have the strange compulsion to dig their own holes and never find a way to crawl back out. Take Denver’s Bad Luck City: Its self-titled debut is a thick, mucky quagmire of piss, bile, mean spirits and whiskey-spiked backwash. Like the Mekons dunking the Dirty Three in a septic…

Aimee Bushong doesn’t need a man to get what she wants — not anymore. Showing off her breast assets in a trio of Mootown gentlemen’s clubs over the past year, the buxom blond songstress earned enough cash to finance her debut album, Bacon and Eggs. As near as Bushong can…

In his anthem “Living and the Dead,” road-hungry songwriter David Dondero calls his chosen vocation “highway archeology.” Add folk architecture, soul excavation and cardiological spelunking to that job description. Over the past half a decade, Dondero’s odometer hasn’t slept as he’s relentlessly toured the side roads and shitty bars of…

These are challenging times for a country performer hoping to find mainstream success without losing his soul. Consider Blake Shelton, a promising young singer from Oklahoma whose deal with a major label, Warner Bros., represents the sort of opportunity that overflows with temptations. “Love Gets in the Way” and “On…

Can’t take one more moment of election post-mortem? Try this simple diversion. Pull out your favorite Dillinger Escape Plan, Jesus Lizard and Entombed CDs and carefully break them into tiny shards. Chew and swallow. Then start singing some of those dark, self-loathing lyrics you’ve been working on during commercials. The…

You can’t throw a rock in Memphis without hitting some arcane bit of music history. For instance, when the members of Lucero, the city’s hometown sons, rented a warehouse to live and rehearse in while not on the road, they discovered that it was once a gym where Elvis Presley…

Because Los Angeles is a music-industry center, a lot of artists from the area devote themselves to conformity — yet for some strange, unexplained reason, SoCal’s underground hip-hop scene remains a bastion of originality. The ShapeShifters epitomize this contradiction. Featuring mouthpieces Akuma, AWOL One, Circus, Die, Existereo, Life Rexall and…

Boston’s Victory at Sea makes brooding, seductive rock for smoky bars everywhere. Mona Elliott channels PJ Harvey and Sally Norvell with her torchy cabaret voice and poignant lyrics, while Taro Hatanaka’s violin wails and moans plaintively. Dave Norton’s tentative drumming heightens the tension as Mel Lederman’s electric piano adds a…

Everybody loves a happy ending — especially fans of the newly reunited duo of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith. Their Tears for Fears created a soundtrack for the early ’80s, complete with catchy pop rock, synthesizer melodies and overt references to primal-scream therapy — not just in the act’s name,…

Some bands come into this world fully formed, moving with fluid ease across the stage as if the lights and wires and racket of a rock show were their natural habitat. Constellations is definitely not one of those bands. With all the poise of a polio-stricken baby giraffe, the quartet…

Richard West, aka Mr. C, has played a pivotal role in dance music since the late ’80s. His first DJ experiences came by way of the R.I.P. and Base events in London, some of the earliest illegal acid-house parties in rave culture. Then, as the frontman for dance-rock pioneers the…

At this moment, Drop the Fear’s biggest fan is a grizzled man in an Army jacket standing on the sidewalk outside the Satire Lounge on East Colfax. He’s never heard the band. In fact, he’s never heard of the band. But he’s a huge fan, nonetheless. “Thanks, man. Thanks!” he…

Life is a work of art,” says Amanda Palmer. “It’s all art — from how you decorate, to how you treat other people, to how you cook your food.” Listening to Palmer’s contributions as one-half of the Boston-based duo the Dresden Dolls, there’s no question that she knows art. But…