Mark out the points! Build the pyre! Assemble different drummers! Light up the fire! Put on your masks and animal skins!” Dictums for an ancient pagan ritual? Canons handed down by a Druidic high priest during Samhain, the Celtic precursor to Halloween where worshipers draped themselves in costumes and the…
There’s a fairly simple theorem that almost universally applies to confessional singer-songwriters: The degree to which they open their troubled souls on an album is directly proportional to how closed off they are in person. For instance, speak with an artist who’s just dropped the most sincerely revealing collection of…
Yeah, I jumped off a cliff, but let’s talk about something else,” Elliott Smith told me in1997. It was shortly after the release of his breakthrough album on Kill Rock Stars, Either/Or, and Smith had recently attempted suicide by throwing himself off a cliff, suffering only minor injuries. Long before…
Welcome to my nightmare. I’ll admit it: I’m a buzz-kill of Ebenezer proportions. I’ve never been a huge fan of Halloween, not as a kid and especially not as an adult. It’s just another stupid, man-made, commercialized celebration of nothing. Really, what good is a holiday if you don’t get…
Carla Bozulich has always been a country girl at heart. You just had to look — or listen — through the fuzz and distortion to notice. As the leader of the Los Angeles artcore combo the Geraldine Fibbers, Bozulich colored many of her own compositions with country underpinnings, adding pedal…
It’s no surprise that Erica Brown once won a Tina Turner impersonation contest; her larger-than-life personality sets ablaze each stage she steps on. Sizzling, smoldering, Brown is hot, whether she’s doing mainstream covers, classic country or avant-garde rock (Foreskin 500, Cherry Bomb Club and Ron Ivory are just a few…
They climb on the stage like acrobats tiptoeing onto high wires. Their moves are poised, exact; their balance and dexterity are honed to surgical precision. Their confidence is almost overbearing, an arrogant mix of savvy and narcissism bolstered by the knowledge that, in the eyes of their fawning audience, they…
Though often lauded for the death-metal stylings of its 1990 debut album, Left Hand Path, Sweden’s Entombed has shape-shifted with each subsequent release. Openly impressionable to outside influences, the band has been on a restless creative trajectory since its beginning, when its name was still Nihilist. By 1993’s Wolverine Blues,…
“I just want to buy a house and make some concrete investments,” says Cam Di-Nunzio, speaking of his artistic aspirations with tongue partly in cheek. And while he may voice the pragmatism and quotidian concerns typical of a guy in his late twenties, DiNunzio is far from typical. As a…
Since I’m a music critic, all anyone ever wants to talk to me about is music. Which is usually fine: As luck would have it, music happens to be my favorite subject. But every now and then, someone insists on pushing my buttons, extolling the virtues of the Grateful Dead…
Cello plus drums and screams: How can you go wrong? Especially if you’re the Portland duo known as Discharge Information System, who perform on Wednesday, October 29, at Revoluciones (719 West Eighth Avenue), with the May Riots and Nightshark. Andy Gehrz pilots the traps and Melissa Collins scrapes the catgut…
Having more in common with Buzz Ozbourne than Buzz Aldrin, the New Ancient Astronauts boldly go where free jazz bares its fangs. Working from the bedrock of brooding hardcore, these adventurous space sailors — sax skronker Aaron Schilling, guitarist Kasey Elkington, bassist Don White and drummer Anthony Bell — don’t…
There’s a fine line between myth-making and fucking around. Tons of rock bands throughout history have been as good, if not better, at playing the image game than they have been at playing their instruments. The Clash, by a barrage of astute media manipulation, was able to downplay the fact…
It’s 1979. A little boy is curled up, warm and fast asleep in his suburban Washington home. It’s a school day, so he’ll have to wake up soon, but for now, he’s breathing slowly and shallowly, safe in a dream. It’s 6 a.m. Suddenly, an unreasonably loud piano and a…
During its longest period between albums, Ween has endured one emotional jolt after another: Touring drummer extraordinaire Claude Coleman survived a near-fatal car accident, uninsured; the band got more attention for a commissioned but never aired Pizza Hut jingle called “Where’d the Cheese Go?” than for releasing any backlogged collectibles;…
Supergroups are every record label’s dream. Take a handful of proven artists and bundle them into a single package, and it’s bound to be a runaway success. Such a scenario is surely what prompted record execs to suggest that Pete Droge, Shawn Mullins and Matthew Sweet take a stab at…
In 1997, shortly after concluding a tour in support of their biggest-selling album, Roots, Sepultura and frontman Max Cavalera unexpectedly split under acrimonious circumstances. Even more unforeseen was the announcement by the rest of the band’s members — including Max’s younger brother, drummer Igor — that they would continue without…
Unlike standard retro-rockers bent on filling clubs with rehashed vintage fashion, the three Followill brothers and one Followill cousin are as real as the shaggy hair on their heads. The Kings of Leon are fluent in several styles of circa-1970 rock. These influences go from their sleeves into the pot,…
DJ Josh Ivy must feel like walking into traffic right about now. Less than a month after his insanely popular GROWednesdays was handed its walking papers by Harry’s (The Beatdown, September 25), his reign at Rise ended. When GROWednesdays went dark, Ivy was bummed but optimistic, confident that he’d find…
The next time the sky cracks open and hails bloody murder, conjure up heavenly angels spitting over the rail. That’s something Ed Hamell is good at doing. A brutally frank songwriter from Syracuse, New York, the narrative-based guitar slinger works exclusively from a jet-black palette — imagining, for example, the…
Mishka Shubaly is staggering home. The singer-songwriter wrote his first tunes while living in a Colorado basement, where his blissfully black sense of humor helped him handle a hard-knock life and the stigma of clothes that smelled like pickles. (He kept his duds in pickle jars from his job at…
It’s a muggy August night in Omaha, and outside the weathered Sokol Auditorium, kids line the sidewalk like a string of firecrackers waiting to go off. It’s kind of a weird setting for a big rock show: a snoozing residential neighborhood full of gas stations, dusty signs and weeds poking…
