Anyone still following hardcore since the denim-clad, illicit-beer-run days of hanging out in the basement knows that modern hardcore has progressed little from the prehistoric time of the Cro-Mags. Cookie-cutter riffs and double bass still support Cookie Monster vocals. Winnipeg’s Comeback Kid is an exception — along with Converge and…
It’s understandable that the men of Korn would be thinking about their bank accounts these days. There ain’t many other first generation nu-metal groups still standing, and if they sit idly by, they’ll be opening for Skid Row at mid-level bars across the country before they know it. Besides, their…
When Jen Korte took a required choir course for her theater degree, she was put with ten other tone-deaf pariahs in remedial choir, where she spent a semester learning quarter notes, half notes and scales. And when it came time to audition again, she still didn’t make it into the…
Few DJs or producers have matched the level of mainstream success enjoyed by Victor Calderone. Handpicked for his skills by the likes of Madonna and Sting, this New York DJ has watched many of his remixes go to Billboard’s Top 10, in addition to putting out massive hit singles of…
Not every musician smokes pot. But a lot do and always have. Long before the term “stoner rock” became shorthand for describing a certain subgenre of music, reggae bands smoked bales and bales of the stuff. So did metal bands, rappers and jazzbos. Plenty of cats have been intimate with…
Who’d win in a wrestling match, Bono or God? Okay, so I ripped off that joke from Airheads, substituting Mr. Hewson for Mr. Kilmister. Nonetheless, judging from his performance Sunday night at the Pepsi Center, Chris Martin already knows the punchline: Bono is God — at least in the eyes…
Having a handle like Bleeding Through can be a stigmatic sign of boring generic metalcore or fashion-produced punk made for pimple-faced teens. But this Orange County act is far from sappy, and its members tend to rail against such trite assumptions. Not that the name is entirely off the mark…
Critics reviewing AnimaminA, the debut EP by Iceland’s Amina, often assume that the disc’s seemingly serene yet unexpectedly intricate compositions are attempts by the string quartet’s players to translate the forbidding geography of their home country into sound. Such conjecture frosts cellist Solrn Sumarlioadóttir. “It’s what people think,” she says,…
“The Two-Man Who” is one way that Swearing at Motorists describes itself. But just as apt might be “The Two-Man Who?” Although associated with tons of bigger names throughout its history — including founding member Don Thrasher of Guided by Voices, recent tourmate the Hold Steady and enigmatic songwriter Scout…
Destroyer, by nature, is a band that conducts hyperbole. Its music is vast. Its scope is epic. Even its name is foreboding, in that late-’90s ironic kinda way. Funny thing is, Destroyer does destroy. It destroys indie-rock wussitude by channeling it into the sonic equivalent of a passive-aggressive apocalypse. Destroyer’s…
I’d always wondered why Gang of Four (a band I like) would have an inspirational shelf life longer than that of, say, the Supremes or James Brown. Though the neo-soul movement tried to marry the soul tradition to hip-hop, until recently, few people seemed to directly revisit the prematurely extinct…
This review is not an indictment of Il Divo, despite the crimes its members have committed against the human eardrum. Likewise, it isn’t intended to assail either American Idol’s Simon Cowell, the professional prick who assembled this pop-operatic boy band, or the material that makes up Ancora — including a…
How can an Elliott Smith tribute album go wrong? The guy was practically deified before his apparent suicide in 2003, and the exaltation has only continued since. But such an homage presents a dilemma: Adding too much of a new twist to Smith’s songs might seem arrogant or inappropriate, while…
Justin Gitlin, who goes by CacheFlowe, is a laptopper with a difference. He’s neither a devoted dance-music maven in thrall to four-on-the-floor beats nor a pure abstractionist allergic to anything resembling a hook. Indeed, he seems open to all manner of sounds, and on Automate Everything, he combines them in…
Sleep pumped through an atomizer. A vast battlefield littered with phoenix feathers and dying warrior elephants. Cough syrup used as embalming fluid and flushed through the collapsed blood vessels of Western ontology. Lagoons full of discarded time. A fossilized spinal column, cervical to coccyx, from a human-Yeti love child. Genealogies…
Ahleuchatistas, What You Will (Cuneiform Records). Technically, Ahleuchatistas makes instrumental rock — but that prosaic description does no justice to the intense, intelligent brand of aural freakiness this North Carolina trio dishes out. Cuts such as “Remember Rumsfeld at Abu Ghraib” feature tricky time signatures, adventurous arrangements and stunningly precise…
Sure, sure, it’s a big concert and all, but what the people really want to know is: Why did Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora and Heather “Be Thy Name” Locklear split up? Well, Star magazine suggests that Locklear got her mitts on a “steamy, X-rated e-mail” to Sambora from Stephanie…
Wasn’t Josh Gracin that country-singing Marine from American Idol’s second season? How’d that jarhead land himself a recording contract? Well, actually, it’s a lot easier to understand than you might think: While Simon, Randy and the eternally narcotized Paula have never really understood the relevance of country music to Middle…
Matt Pond PA has always existed on the periphery of popularity. With nine releases over the past eight years, the Brooklyn-based chamber-pop outfit has not wanted for material. But there has always been an introverted quality to its music — a sense that the ensemble is playing through a thick…
Low has the sort of soundtrack quality that’s quietly tucked into expansive landscape shots and dwindling moments of self-realization. Every album is a score to some unwritten indie flick that centers on a smart, repressed antagonist and the vain pursuit of a more perfect life. The Duluth, Minnesota, threesome –…
Seattle’s rap scene will forever be overshadowed by that towering titan of the mike, Sir Mix-a-Lot. Okay, maybe not so much. But the sleety city on Puget Sound hasn’t been well known for its output of hip-hop — that is, not until the Oldominion crew sprouted amid the town’s grunge…
Listening to Peregrine, the Appleseed Cast’s forthcoming album, you’d never know that the group got its start as an emo outfit named December’s Tragic Drive in Lawrence, Kansas, during the late ’90s. While peers such as the Get Up Kids have taken their adolescent emoting into alt-country territory, the Appleseed…
