Music

Hip-hop’s flavor-of-the-minute aesthetic keeps the music perpetually exciting, even as it makes successful long-term careers as unlikely as Al Franken endorsing Bush. Contrarians inevitably point to LL Cool J — the lone old-school rapper with a flag still planted near the chart summit — as proof that the odds can…

When French post-modernist Gilles Deleuze wrote “The abstract does not explain, but must itself be explained,” he had no clue his ideas would inspire a German avant-electronic duo named Mouse on Mars. The group’s penchant for Deleuze has already been documented by its contributions to Folds and Rhizomes and In…

As the leader of The Jonez and Judge Roughneck, Byron Shaw has been a headliner on the Denver music scene for longer than some of its younger members have been alive — but that doesn’t mean he’s stopped evolving as an artist. Feed Your Soul, which is being celebrated at…

Write this down so you don’t forget it: My Calculus Beats Your Algebra is the least pretentious band in Denver. True pretension, after all, lies in trying to be something you’re not. And with its self-titled CD, the duo of Bryan Danknich and Thorin Klosowski proves that its uncompromising blitz…

“Even the truth sometimes is subjective,” says Sean Kelly. “I mean, it’s so tainted with emotions. It’s all about people’s feelings.” Speaking via cell phone before a Friday-night performance at the Marquee Theatre in Tempe, Arizona, Kelly, the Samples’ frontman, listens calmly to the opinions of his former bandmate, Jeep…

Brooklyn-based collective Antibalas (Spanish for “bulletproof”) is the proud musical descendant of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. The Nigerian-born singer/activist is known as Africa’s Bob Marley and credited as the creator of Afrobeat, an amalgam of West African horn-heavy highlife, funk and jazz. Working within the framework established by Kuti and enhancing it…

It’s hard to jam econo with a catheter. Ask Mike Watt. In 2000, after an abscess in his perineum burst, the legendary Minutemen and fIREHOSE bassist found himself bedridden with a raging fever, pounding Percodan, hallucinating, peeing orange and contemplating death more than the engine room. Fittingly enough, Watt used…

Politics is a hot topic in the music realm right now, from the superstar stratosphere of Bruce Springsteen and R.E.M. all the way down to your everyday struggling punk-rock band. Virginia’s Strike Anywhere may not be filling stadiums, but its searing melodic hardcore and fierce commitment to social issues has…

The question of whether a performer can transfer everything that’s impressive about a recording to the stage is particularly key in the case of Lloyd Banks, the first member of 50 Cent’s G-Unit squad to get the solo treatment. The Hunger for More, Banks’s debut disc, exceeds expectations, thanks largely…

On the Bled’s 2001 EP, His First Crush, the album cover bears the line “Can you still feel the butcher knives?” While it’s a clever play on Jimmy Eat World’s chorus to “For Me This Is Heaven,” from Clarity — “Can you still feel the butterflies?” — it’s also an…

Metronomic beats? Subtle yet complex layers of vintage keys and guitar? A woman singing robotically sexy French/English lyrics? Nope, it’s not Stereolab; it’s England’s Electrelane. But while comparisons to its better-known influence are inevitable, Electrelane is no mere ‘Lab creation. Formed in 1998, the all-female quartet has steadily assembled a…

During a recorded Cowboy Mouth performance of “Jenny Says” (available for a full, free listen on the band’s website), vocalist Fred LeBlanc announces: “When the world is coming down, we’re gonna play a solo.” That slim statement — a twist on a key line in the song’s chorus — is…

By now, even deaf invalids are sick to death of mash-ups — those annoying DJ cuts that smear the vocal tracks of one song over the instrumentals of another. Looks like it’s time to take the whole concept to the next level: a band that crams together the tunes of…

When playing together, Scooter and Lavelle Dupree, the duo better known as San Diego’s LSDJs, possess a chemistry that’s more than simply two DJs taking turns at the turntables. Scooter and Lavelle met while playing out in San Diego. After constantly finding themselves being booked to perform at the same…

I just find that I learn more and more from the reality of stuff and how you should, like, take it,” says Bright Channel’s Jeff Suthers, philosophically, his forehead furrowed in puzzlement. “You can get too wrapped up in stuff and take it way too seriously.” Upon listening to Bright…

Getting ahold of Warren Haynes is tricky. Understandably, he likes to keep a low profile. For the past few years he’s been touring pretty much non-stop, playing leap-frog between the current incarnations of the Allman Brothers and the Dead, not to mention fronting his own band, Gov’t Mule. Such a…

Earlier this year, Interscope exec Jimmy Iovine suggested that Page Hamilton assemble a band to wring a few dollars out of the retired Helmet name. Hamilton obliged, enlisting Orange 9mm’s Chris Traynor to take on guitar and bass duties and White Zombie skinsman John Tempesta to sit behind the kit…

If you have to rip someone off, at least shoot for the good shit. New York City’s the Exit picks some great bands to plagiarize, but oddly enough, the trio covets its victims’ more lackluster work: U2’s October, the Police’s Synchronicity, Bad Brains’ I Against I. One man’s trash, though,…

Young Buck (born David Brown) isn’t twice as valuable as 50 Cent, his benefactor, but neither is his rapping seven-ninths less worthy because he’s only eaten two pieces of lead compared to the esteemed Mr. Cent’s nine. Rather, he’s a dynamic, if derivative, performer who’s got a ways to go…

Today’s rap game is suffocating in the stale humidity produced by a slew of blowhard MCs. As sweat seeps through its pores like slow lava, out of nowhere appears the Pharcyde with an ice-cold pitcher of Arnold Palmers and a platter of fresh fruit in the form of Humboldt Beginnings…

Whether you consider her a peddler of pretentious twaddle or an endless font of pure Icelandic genius, you have to give Bjrk credit for eschewing safe options. No other platinum-selling diva has had the guts to forge paths as idiosyncratic as those followed by this charismatic artist over the past…