There’s a right way and a wrong way to add violin to a rock band, but if you put Oakland’s Heavenly States to the test, they’d surely pass. For one thing, violinist Genevieve Gagon mixes things up with piano and synthesizer on many of the group’s songs, but the fact…
The eye-twitching, cheek-blushing auditory images created by the New Pornographers could never be poly-bagged, hidden behind the counter and credited to anyone with the surname of Flynt. Band grandpappy A.C. Newman knows how to craft a tune birthed in the familiar sounds of yesteryear yet soaked in originality, his sing-songy…
Attempts to revive veteran artists’ careers via superstar duets are as predictable as claims that embattled bureaucrats resigned to spend more time with their families. Bring ‘Em In, the new Buddy Guy offering, certainly fits the pattern, and it’ll have plenty of competition. After all, Carlos Santana, among the bigger…
With enough sex appeal to make even John Waters salivate, Phoenix’s Les Hell on Heels secured an unprecedented three-record deal on Bomp! Records, one of the nation’s oldest surviving indie labels (it was founded in 1974 by the late Greg Shaw). The band’s self-titled debut, engineered by Jack Endino (Nirvana,…
Much has happened in the five years since Earlimart released its sophomore effort, the raucous Kingdom of Champions, which drew comparisons to the Pixies and X. Three years later, songwriter/guitarist Aaron Espinoza, bassist/keyboardist Ariana Murray and drummer David Latter took a sharp left turn, reinventing themselves as the properly medicated…
You like funk? Damn right you do. If there’s ever any question of who’s the funkiest jazz band in town, Buckner Funken Jazz (due at Jazz@Jack’s on Saturday, October 1) answers with absolute authority. Rod Buckner, the founder and leader of this act, is flat-out scary on his trumpet. Whether…
Lee Burridge’s DJ career may have begun nearly twenty years ago in southern England, but it was after relocating to Hong Kong that he really honed his craft and became one of the biggest names in the house and trance scenes. That’s also where he met his future collaborator, Craig…
On that night eleven years ago, Uphollow was in way over its head. But you had to cut the guys some slack. It was only their fourth show, and they were still high school freshmen; they looked about as big as action figures on the vast stage of the Bluebird…
“If this really is my last show,” says Leonardo Zayas, aka Leo 7, “that’s what I want to see: happy faces having a good time, not a lame one.” Rubber Planet’s ace timekeeper has been living on borrowed time since his visa expired almost a year ago; in a little…
Naturally. It’s more than just the title of the sophomore disc by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings; it’s a one-word manifesto. Born in James Brown’s home town of Augusta, Georgia, Jones spent decades in church bands and doing session work as a backup singer before joining the Dap-Kings, a New…
Earlier this year, Carlos Santana and his wife, Deborah, handed one of the guitarist’s yes men his walking papers. But it wasn’t because the employee had embezzled thousands of dollars that he blew on hookers and blow, or because he’d pissed in the coffeepot, or because he just couldn’t make…
If you think U.K.-based Funeral for a Friend must have been named for a song from Elton John’s 1973 album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, you’ve just dated yourself in the eyes of young Funeral drummer Ryan Richards. Each time an interviewer makes this assumption, Richards figures that he or she…
The Fray is the modern-rock equivalent of Everybody Loves Raymond, a series that approached everyday situations with a shrewd exactitude, managing to be salient without resorting to bawdiness or gimmickry. Even Raymond’s detractors were eventually disarmed by the show’s benign disposition and lack of pretense. The Fray is sure to…
Who doesn’t want to root for the solo outing of rock’s deadpan ghoul of ’80s cool? Nexterday’s opening track, “Crackpot,” with its pelvic, ground-down guitar and Ocasek’s trademark throat-caught strut, sounds damn near sexy, even with a respirator for its backing track. Sadly, that anthemic potential evaporates quickly and quietly…
Once an irresistibly goofy Brit-pop trio with ungainly mutton-chop sideburns, Supergrass has reached a point of maturity where it finally seems more interested in studying the menu than in making goo-goo eyes at the waitress. On their fifth full-length, Oxford’s retro-groovers have outgrown monosyllabic teen anthems to embrace the emotional…
The opening section of “Glósóli,” an emblematic effort by these idiosyncratic Icelanders, mates a deliberate tempo with vocal lines that sound as if they’re being delivered by an especially chilly castrati. But before the tune can be dismissed as an intellectual variation on the recorded works of Enya, its initially…
Funk is a dirty word. And it should be: The style was conceived as a grimy, hormone-drenched reaction to the detachment and abstraction of cool jazz. Sadly, few funk practitioners in the decades since the style’s heyday have retained that gloriously unwholesome essence of lust and sweat. Nothing drives this…
Like, oh, my God! This disc is totally ’80s! And not the ’80s being resurrected by the Killers and Franz Ferdinand! No, these are the perky, thrift-store-chic ’80s that smug comics ridicule on VH1 several times a day! But instead of satirizing this stuff, Kelli*Said plays it pretty damn straight!…
HorrorPops, Bring It On! (Hellcat Records). You can count Denmark’s contribution to rock and roll on one bloody stump. Aqua? Attila Kovacs? Crowded Orifice? Unfortunately, HorrorPops, Copenhagen-bred rockers chasing Debra Harry’s ghost through L.A.’s underbelly, don’t offer any sonic treasure, either. Two doo-wop chicks in straitjackets, a guitarist from Nekromantix…
While We’re From Japan! would have you believe it’s from the Land of the Rising Sun, a far more likely birthplace would be Iceland — specifically, Sigur Rós’s garage. Raising more racket, if fewer goosebumps, than Jon Thor Birgisson and crew, the Portland group still evokes enough glacial grace and…
As long as musicians are on the right side of popular trends, they’re golden — but when such fads run their course, performers need a Plan B. Bassist Dan Schmid and keyboardist Dustin Lanker understand this necessity all too well. The pair were members of Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, a rock/ska…
For a certain kind of person, there’s nothing happier than really sad music. That’s where the National comes in. On the quintet’s latest critically lauded album, Alligator, Matt Berninger comes on like Bill Callahan fronting American Music Club, while brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner and Scott and Bryan Devendorf provide…
