To spectators of the Rust Belt garage-rock revival, the Raconteurs must seem like a dream come true. For Detroit darling Jack White, the band is the perfect chance for him to ditch his lubberly sidekick, Meg; for his Motor City counterpart, Brendan Benson, it’s a way to grab some sack;…
It’s a shame that Pearl Jam is a great album. Not because there’s anything wrong with Pearl Jam putting together a pop-rock album with fire and vigor; the first three songs, particularly the radio-perfect “World Wide Suicide,” showcase a screaming, off-the-walls Pearl Jam that sounds straight out of the mid-’90s…
Kill Rock Stars is owned by a man named Slim Moon who has better taste in music than you do. His ears are irrefutably sharp: The KRS roster is a dense handbook on indie-underground innovators and breakthrough wonders ranging from Sleater-Kinney and Elliott Smith to the Gossip and Xiu Xiu…
Maybe for his next trick, illusionist David Blaine will arrange to have himself sewn up in the rotting carcass of an elephant. He could eat Funyuns, watch TV and beat off in there — then emerge triumphantly at the next Republican National Convention, weeping messiah-like as red, white and blue…
Guitarist Mark Turner’s Homebrew is less a band than a platform upon which a swarm of Denver’s best-known (and best) blues and R&B players can cut loose. And despite the disc’s title, smoke and mirrors aren’t required. The sounds on display here aren’t of the gutbucket variety. Instead, the disc…
Dropping Daylight, Brace Yourself (Octone). On a blurb affixed to the cover of Brace Yourself, members of Hawthorne Heights liken Dropping Daylight to a “punk-rock Ben Folds Five” — a terrifying description if ever there was one. In truth, the band doesn’t venture far from the pop-emo template, but Sebastian…
The jokes about tentacles and ink could write themselves, so we won’t bother. What we will do, however, is note how gleefully the members of Austin’s Octopus Project plow through their glitched-out post-rock instrumentals. Armed with an arsenal of toys, keyboards, drum machines and samplers, spouses Josh and Yvonne Lambert,…
Max Cavalera is an icon in the world of metal. As frontman for Brazilian legend Sepultura, he helped elevate thrash and death metal to new heights. Following his departure from that band, he founded Soulfly in 1998 and began anew, fearlessly incorporating programmed drums, keys and acoustic instrumentation into his…
The Rocket Summer is Texas native Bryce Avary, who on each of his albums has played every instrument and sung almost every vocal with such frenzied energy that he makes power pop actually seem dangerous. Imagine Ben Lee singing Christian rock while doped up on so much speed his head…
When Michael Shepard sings, even broken legs sound beautiful. His is a boyish lilt that could float on water. At times, the Lovedrug frontman’s voice quivers like a toddler’s lower lip; at others, it sounds like a daydream becoming a nightmare. Shepard is the entry point to Lovedrug’s pretty, progressive…
Straight outta Belton, Texas, Flyleaf is a teen-angst quintet that aims to inspire through depression. Lead singer Lacey Mosley’s lyrics are rooted in her hardscrabble upbringing and early addiction issues, but rather than simply recap her personal tragedies, she infuses them with upbeat messages. “Fully Alive,” from the band’s self-titled…
Experimental Dental School is the band that would play prom — that is, if the prom was on Mars and the student body was made up of pre-pubescent space aliens. Distilling polished hipster dance rock, the Oakland-based trio filters the likes of Adult. and Mates of State down to simple…
Mobbsters Prodigy and Havoc have a new sugar daddy: 50 Cent, who recently signed them to his G Unit label. Too bad the pros in the relationship are offset by plenty of cons — and not the kind who populate so many Mobb Deep songs. Granted, Mr. Cent’s interest in…
Tell us, Mr. Dolby, how did she blind you with science? Did it hurt? Or maybe your 1983 chart-topping synth-pop hit, “She Blinded Me With Science,” was meant to be understood as a metaphor — where “blinded” really means “bedazzled,” and “science” can be substituted for “her wicked perm and/or…
Dear Palisades, Do you like me? Please check yes or no. I know we don’t know each other very well, but with your bubblegum charm and my awkward posture, I think that we could make a good team. Whenever I listen to your sweet pop melodies, it makes me daydream…
Toby Flowers has spent the past couple of years decimating dance floors across the globe as DJ Demi. Considered by many to be one of the dance scene’s fastest rising stars, the British DJ’s dedication to straight-up house music and his knack for keeping a crowd moving for up to…
The name Cinematic Underground sounds more like a movement than a band. And for Nathan Johnson, who leads the international twelve-piece ensemble, it is. Last fall, he and nearly a dozen of his friends and family members decided to devote a year of their lives to living communally — first…
One Saturday every June, thousands of people descend on the Golden Triangle for the Westword Music Showcase. For music fans, the Showcase is the most hotly anticipated local-music event all year, every year. And to my continual amazement, that old cliche is eternally applicable: The Showcase just keeps getting bigger…
Junkie XL, born Tom Holkenborg, has remixed tracks for some of the biggest-selling stars in history, including Coldplay and Britney Spears. He’s scored top-selling video games like Forza Motorsport and produced soundtracks for such films as Catwoman and Domino. He appears to be at the top of his game. But…
There is a curse attached to the U.K.’s coveted Mercury Music Prize, commonly referred to as “mercury poisoning.” Previous winners like Roni Size, Talvin Singh and Badly Drawn Boy have been doomed with a steady decline in album sales and label support. Gomez is one of those bands, but it’s…
Erasure’s Union Street, a CD featuring semi-obscure tracks from the veteran synth band’s past as rendered on acoustic instruments, has earned a handful of negative notices — including one printed in these very pages. Last month, reviewer Jason Heller dismissed the disc as a “joke,” ending his assessment with the…
Maybe it’s the seizure that opens the mega-hit “Crazy” — four solid punches of bass drum marking the track’s unyielding tempo — that hints at the precarious character of Gnarls Barkley. The frenzied timbre of that voice rising to the conceit of the chorus’s question: “Does that make me crazy?”…
