Approximately 73 million bands have formed at colleges over the years, and the vast majority of them fall into the rock or pop categories, with a few hip-hop or jazz outfits thrown in for good measure. That makes the Steep Canyon Rangers an anomaly — a bluegrass combo formed in…
Liturgy comes in many shapes, from sacrament to the more prosaic forms of social ritual. Music, of course, is another. Still, few musicians are able to imbue their art with the kind of prescribed circularity that feels revelatory rather than lazy. With her debut full-length, Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom,…
“Can’t sleep with this frustration,” Chimaira frontman Mark Hunter growls midway through his band’s fourth LP, sounding like he hasn’t had a good night’s rest in about two years. And in a way, he hasn’t. After touring for nearly twenty straight months following the release of 2003’s The Impossibility of…
Jacques Brel and Morrissey walk into a bar. As Kurt Weill pours the Maker’s and glasses are raised, Marlene Dietrich pulls up a bar stool. The liquor flows and the conversation percolates. Dietrich is considering a sex change, Brel can’t stop talking about abortions and the Holocaust, and Morrissey keeps…
The word “orchestral” gets dropped every time some cruddy indie-rock band crams a tuba solo or two-part harmony into one of its songs. But few auteurs of underground pop have as much conceptual chutzpah as Dave Longstreth, the nucleus of the Dirty Projectors. Layered with beauty and skewered by weirdness,…
Jason Collett is full of love, with nowhere to go. Like a wandering traveler ill-advised by Cupid, the Canadian-based singer-songwriter is a sentimental sap boarding a one-way train to Bummerville. But Collett’s candy-heart tracks are better fitted as acoustic guitar pop than melodramatic Dashboard hype. Noted for his guitar work…
For those of you who find the paint-by-numbers approach employed by far too many emo bands to be exceedingly dull, here’s some good news: An increasing number of them find it boring, too. Matchbook Romance is a case in point. A quartet from the rock hotbed of Poughkeepsie, New York,…
The December Question has come a long way since forming in 2002. Early on, the band’s acoustic-driven pop was largely centered around singer/guitarist Becky Alter (a former Westword account executive), whose raspy, robust vocals recalled Janis Joplin filtered through Melissa Etheridge. Since then, the core duo of Alter and co-founder/bassist…
Curtis Jones had a lot to do with revitalizing the Chicago house-music scene in the ’90s. As DJ Cajmere, Jones produced vocal house tunes that easily rivaled that of his heroes, the men who built the scene. In an effort to branch out, Jones later adopted the moniker Green Velvet…
Some listeners adore them, and some abhor them — but none can credibly deny that the Strokes have had a significant impact on this decade’s popular-music scene. Is This It, the outfit’s 2001 debut, arrived on a blast of hype powerful enough to blow open mainstream doors that had previously…
Nine — that’s the number of Denver bands officially making the trip to South by Southwest this year. Okay, seven, if you want to get technical, since Uncle Earl is from Lyons and the Great Redneck Hope hails from Colorado Springs. And those are just the local bands that were…
Ever since Mick Jagger sang “Sympathy for the Devil” at Altamont, rock and roll and evil have gone together like fire and brimstone. Seattle’s Himsa takes its name from the Sanskrit word ahimsa, which connotes living in peace and harmony. By dropping the important first letter, the bandmembers transform the…
Why don’t worms have balls? Because they can’t dance. As witticisms go, this one is awfully mediocre. So how did it wind up inspiring “Worms,” an entertainingly idiosyncratic song on Comfort of Strangers, the latest CD by Beth Orton? According to the British singer-songwriter, who’s better known for seriousness than…
All hail Boogie Down Productions! Their track “The Bridge Is Over” cemented dis records and rap feuds as legitimate branches of the art form! From 3rd Bass to Kool Moe Dee to 50 Cent, a rapper’s best work will come in the form of a well-thrown bitch-slap. But nothing in…
You’re forgiven for approaching every supergroup with skepticism — even more so when a group’s first album was less than thrilling. Which brings us to Jeff Tweedy, Jim O’Rourke and Glenn Kotche. The three are back again as Loose Fur, and this time they got it right. Instead of a…
In case anyone forgot that Mudhoney leader Mark Arm’s true roots are in early-’80s hardcore, not grunge, here’s Under a Billion Suns, a disc whose worldview is as ensconced in Cold War geopolitics and nuclear hair-pulling as your average Dead Kennedys seven-inch. Musically, it’s not that distinguishable from its predecessor,…
The past few years have seen a thawing of indie disdain toward dance music; rock shows that used to be domino rows of the stylishly dead now reveal vaguely coordinated twitches of life. Kudu is the latest act in a loose lasso that includes everyone from Peaches to the Rapture…
In the past, New Orleans’s Terius Gray, who’s over thirty but still Juvenile, has cared more about coochie than about current events; “Back That Azz Up” doesn’t exactly qualify as a political statement. It’s little wonder, then, that “Get Ya Hustle On,” a Reality Check track about the Hurricane Katrina…
Matson Jones’s new EP is basically a brick to keep the door propped open till the band’s sophomore full-length comes out, presumably later this year. As between-meal snacks go, though, it’s a filling one — and that’s not even counting all those empty carbs in the title. Each of the…
My Calculus Beats Your Algebra is made up of a couple of pretentious fucks — and don’t let any past remarks or reviews of this noise duo convince you otherwise. Modesty does not become the twosome of Thorin Klosowski and Bryan Danknich, but that’s exactly the point. Shackleton’s Dogs is…
The Gourds, Heavy Ornamentals (Eleven Thirty Records). Earthy yet ethereal, dirt-road common yet mystical, the ever-evolving Gourds come close to magical alchemy on Heavy Ornamentals. Their down-home looseness masks the broadest of roots-music palettes and an unbounded taste for lyrics that seamlessly encompass everything from Monroe’s bluegrass to Kerouac’s hipster…
There’s nothing like an old-school death-rock show to bring the ghouls out of the woodwork. Expect nothing less than a parade of black lipstick and Deadly Nightshade Manic Panic when 45 Grave claws its way up from the underworld and takes the stage of the Bluebird. Led by singer Dinah…
