Music

Since 1995’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx and 1996’s Ironman, Ghostface Killah has been the most consistent rapper of the Wu-Tang collective. While the rest of the clan continues to churn out average projects every couple of years, Ghostface has proudly carried the Wu-Tang torch on each release. However, The…

Any writer who dares suggest that Mike Skinner, the Brit behind The Streets, is something less than a primitive genius would undoubtedly get the frigid-shoulder treatment at a critics’ roundtable. Reviewers on both sides of the pond worked themselves into a lather over Original Pirate Material, Skinner’s 2002 full-length debut,…

Naming your band after a line from Wes Anderson’s 1998 cult masterpiece Rushmore is a dicey proposition. What happens if your music totally sucks shit? You’re gonna have a pack of rabid, vengeful Max Fischer apostles out to pop a cap in your ass. Luckily for the three members of…

As a songwriter, Rebecca Folsom shows many faces on Shine, a collection of twelve original songs she recorded last year in Austin. At times her approach is pensive and spare, with minimally instrumented songs that recall other cerebral female writers, such as Edie Brickell and Nanci Griffith. This approach lends…

For hipper-than-thou subversive types who extol Tenacious D’s lampooning of the time-tested power ballad, metal’s appeal lies in its irony. But for the hardcore, metal is a religion — and they take the music on faith. Lately I’ve been a backslider; on most Saturday nights, you can find me in…

The late Screamin’ Jay Hawkins once declared, “I’d rather sing opera than be a black Vincent Price.” And though he’s better remembered as a novelty performer who rose from a coffin, foisting a skull on the end of a stick, Hawkins possessed an astounding vocal range that would have made…

The Briefs return to late-’70s-era dirt punk, creating a ruckus made of hit-and-run guitars and songs about pubic lice and the cost of getting laid. Skinny ties and bleached hair aside, the Seattle band is brazen enough to have put out an EP of cover songs about spree killing, including…

Talk about being snakebit. Since 1993, when Jurassic 5 first began making noise on the fringes of the Los Angeles hip-hop scene, deck men Cut Chemist and DJ Nu-Mark, abetted by emcees Akil, Marc 7, Zaakir and Charli 2na, have put on consistently great live shows — a rap rarity…

Named by an Indian mystic whom his parents followed in Texas, folk troubadour Devendra Banhart sings quirky, skeletal vignettes with a voice that can change from brittle tenor to quivering falsetto in the blink of an eye. Accompanying himself on a battered acoustic guitar, the 23-year-old lo-fi eccentric was a…

With his occasional faux-Anglo accent, declarations regarding proper courtship and a love affair with all things retro, Jack White of the White Stripes looks at times to be patterning his image after an old romantic British dandy. Little did we know, he has a wicked left hook. This undercover Detroit…

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, a longtime Colorado favorite, has returned to solid ground. When the act started in the late ’60s, it first tried the jug-band circuit but didn’t gain a real audience until it added drums and occasional electric guitars, creating the country-meets-folk-rock sound that’s still popular today…

Whether being banned for life from playing at the Cricket on the Hill is a blessing or a curse, the Otter Pops still found a way to make ends meet on Denver’s punk-rock circuit after being 86’d from the hallowed watering hole. But if they actually did drive a car…

Tuesday night at the Lion’s Lair might as well be a night in Antarctica. The place is desolate. A couple dozen patrons loll across the bar, which is already a half-inch deep with spilled Pabst. Even with the sparse attendance, it takes ten minutes to get a beer. You’d do…

Roll call at a Hackensaw Boys family reunion sounds like Cletus on The Simpsons gathering his kinfolk from yonder hollow: Pee Paw! Shiner! Mahlon! Skeeter! Jigsaw! Salvage! Dante J! C.B.! Uncle Blind Bobby! Kooky-Eyed Fox! Add a grizzled hound named Lulu and a few jugs of ‘shine, and the gathering…

Have you seen that new commercial on TV, the one where shit like stray basketballs and clumsy bicyclists and spurts of water from hoses start hitting the sides of a car? All those random thumps start speeding up and blurring together until they coalesce into a funky, polyrhythmic symphony of…

When Eminem emerged on the national scene, he seemed like such a market-driven creation — a pasty MC working overtime to shock clueless middlebrows — that I couldn’t believe his shtick would have much staying power. In April 1999, I committed this theory to print, predicting that he would “be…

The HorrorPops may look like the Cramps, but they’re more razor-edged pop than horror. The outfit’s parts fit together like Roger Corman’s Frankenstein — not quite as scary as hoped. The Concrete Blonde head of Souxsie Sioux is stitched onto the torso of Gwen Stefani. Dick Dale’s arms are added,…

Listening to Cassidy’s first two singles, “Hotel” and “Get No Better,” you might think Split Personality is full of club tracks. Thankfully, it’s not. But while Cassidy’s debut is imaginative at times — Personality is split into three sections with five songs each: Cassidy (the party club joints), Tha Problem…

Tom Burns is a music lover, not an attention seeker. For years, he’s quietly been issuing jazz discs from his Bailey headquarters on a pair of imprints, Capri and Tapestry. The recordings vary in quality and adventurousness from release to release, but as In the Pocket and Dreams Untold demonstrate,…

Listen up, all you would-be rap moguls: College is for suckers. Want to be a baller like Roc-A-Fella’s Damon Dash? Want to build an entertainment empire bigger than that of Russell Simmons? Then take heed: For a hip-hop education, the only relevant institution is the school of hard knocks. And…