It’s often difficult to critically analyze a much-beloved artist, because the tendency is to excuse irksome traits or loathsome sonic detours simply because of past greatness. So while it’s tempting to give Morrissey a free pass for hauling in a choir of children — who appear on several tracks on…
Toby Keith may not really be a dick, but he plays one on CD. He generally comes across as ultra-smug, as if rubbing his popularity in the noses of intellectual elitists were half the fun of success. Yet the attitudinal aggressiveness that dominates White Trash is vastly preferable to the…
Superstring Theory’s debut EP, Same Damn Story, was a promising if disjointed disc of small-budget electro-pop. The duo’s sophomore effort, Everything Before Now, follows exactly the same formula — only with bigger ambitions and a wider panorama. Like She Wants Revenge without the wrinkles, singer/guitarist Jeff Eyser and keyboardist/ programmer…
Here we go again: another party band trying to imprint the good times on plastic. The results are spotty, but Always Been’s top moments suggest that Environmental Stimulation Project (which celebrates the new disc’s release on Friday, April 14, at the Oriental Theater, with Bop Skizzum and the Flobots) has…
Drywall, Barbeque Babylon (Redfly). Wicked sophisticated political satire is Stan Ridgway’s latest vehicle, and when he sings “The AARP Is After Me,” the former Wall of Voodoo frontman is just as hilariously surly as he was on his signature ’80s hit “Mexican Radio.” This genre-blurring pageant of pop styles is…
He’s lived in caves, worn Lone Ranger masks on stage and made records that have sent legions of the politically correct running for the stop button. But despite the cartoon outlaw image that has grown up around David Allen Coe, it’s his myriad accomplishments as a songwriter, performer, author and…
Cell-phone cameras. MP3-playing sunglasses. Laser-pointing, voice-recording, de-ionizing salad spinners. Thanks a lot, technology. Now everything that does anything does something else, too. Benevento Russo Duo, the Brooklyn-based drums-n-keys outfit, is the musical equivalent and might just be the Optimus Prime of genre-crushing hybrid bands. Using a battery of ivoried equipment…
Being pimped by Little Steven and talked up by Bruce Springsteen is no easy feat. But both happened to Seattle’s Boss Martians last summer at Little Steven’s International Underground Garage Fest. The irony? The Martians’ music isn’t even garage rock. In fact, it’s something way greater: power pop in its…
The lack of an ocean in the Midwest means two things: Scene kids are pale motherfuckers, and music is heavily under the influence of indoor activities. It’s no wonder, then, that Chicago, the land of bitter winters and muggy summers, is such an incestuous breeding ground for homebodied stoner rock…
Guess directing movies isn’t as profitable as most of us think. The former Robert Cummings, who’s been a Zombie for years now, is fresh off helming last year’s The Devil’s Rejects, the sequel to his inaugural gore-fest, 2003’s House of 1000 Corpses — yet he’s temporarily setting cin-e-mah aside in…
Saves the Day isn’t going to change the world. Playing power-pop drivel and crooning teenage sap to high school girls won’t cure breast cancer or keep the four horsemen from raising hell — but then again, that’s a lot to ask of a band, especially one from New Jersey. There…
Not long ago, Todd Thomas, aka Speech, seemed bound for long-lasting super-fame, not a career spent largely in the commercial underground. During the late ’80s, he co-founded Arrested Development, whose 1992 bow, 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life of…, spawned “Tennessee,” a smash that even avowed…
Aggro-prog noiseniks with an ear for pop music, the three members of Parts & Labor churn out a melodic but confrontational sound characterized by electronic tinkering, smothering guitar distortion and flurries of pummelling percussion. But the Brooklyn-based outfit isn’t averse to using the droning skirl of a bagpipe to get…
Kansas’s Split Lip Rayfield plays in Denver so much, it almost feels like it’s a local band. It’s no wonder, then, that when Kirk Rundstrom, the guitarist of the mutant bluegrass act, was recently diagnosed with cancer, a bunch of Split Lip’s Colorado comrades quickly organized two Kirk Rundstrom Benefit…
Dave Shayman, better known to the masses as Disco D, burst onto the scene at the age of eighteen as one of the originators of the ghettotech sound — a wicked hybrid of techno, electro and ghetto booty house. Once he brought his turntablist skills into the mix, it wasn’t…
Patrick Meese turned a lot of heads two years ago with the release of his debut EP, I Don’t Buy It. But no one was more stirred by the music than his younger brother, Nathan, who was so moved by a single song that he dropped out of college in…
With his spiky, dishwater-blond hair and jade-green eyes, you’d never suspect that Beto Hale is Mexican. But he is. The grandson of a Polish Jew who emigrated to Mexico in 1921, Hale is Mexican by birth, with Polish, French, Welsh, Irish and Scottish ancestry in his blood. He grew up…
Ion got its start in 2000 as a side project for former Blister 66 bassist and programmer Joe Sego and ex-Dropsound vocalist Noe De’Leon. By 2002, with the addition of Todd Schlafer, Rocket Ajax’s erstwhile axman, as well as guitarist Nik Lawhorn from Synthetic Delusion and Blister 66 drummer David…
If the line between genius and insanity is thin, Say Anything’s Max Bemis is walking it like a tightrope. He’s seen his opus, 2004’s Say Anything…Is a Real Boy, simultaneously catapult him onto a major label and give him a multiple-tour-canceling nervous breakdown. So Bemis yells. Not a tearful emo…
Since 1999, Fred Frith has served as the Luther B. Marchant Professor of Composition at Mills College in Oakland, California. But the British-born guitarist and avant-gardist admits that his credentials for the post are more experiential than academic. “In terms of education, most of my students are better qualified to…
The Flaming Lips’ latest was largely inspired by leader Wayne Coyne’s extreme dislike for President Bush — a fact that might have spoiled the fun for fans of every ideological description. After all, the delicate balance of beauty, wit and spaciness that’s marked the band’s recent work left no room…
Not long ago, Two Gallants was poised to be the next it band — lauded by the press for electrically lo-fi live performances and a debut full-length, 2004’s The Throes, that even Pitchfork and Vice couldn’t entirely dog with mean-spirited puns. A couple years later, with a few dozen tours…
