Rick Astley will never give this award up Here’s a handy guide to all the great content you might have missed this week while you were busy voting on Rick Astley as best act ever in the MTV Europe Music Awards. Thanks to your tireless efforts, the EMAs were successfully…
New York City practically sweats innovative bands, but it has produced few as utterly otherworldly as Gang Gang Dance (due at the Larimer Lounge on Friday, November 7, with Marnie Stern). Bandmembers Lizzi Bougatsos, Brian DeGraw, Tim DeWit and Josh Diamond utilize all manner of percussion, keyboards and electronics to…
Stephen Malkmus, left, with his band, the Jicks. Former Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus is an eccentric fellow, which explains in large part the idiosyncracies of this Q&A, conducted for a Westword profile published in advance of his Thursday, November 6, appearance at the Gothic Theatre. But that’s not the only…
In an indie-rock world dominated by males in their twenties and often choked with irony and self-consciousness, Marnie Stern is most assuredly an outlier. A 32-year-old woman with serious guitar chops and songwriting skills that are quickly growing to match them, Stern is unabashedly earnest about playing what she calls…
k.d. lang. Ms. k.d. lang isn’t just a woman with a fondness for lower-case letters. She’s also a gifted vocalist and songwriter whose career has taken some intriguing twists and turns over the years — and she guides readers through many of them in the following Q&A, conducted in advance…
Prepare yourself for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Rock Band Here’s a user-friendly guide to all the great content you may have missed this week while you were busy practicing singing along to all your favorite Beatles’ tunes in anticipation of the just-announced Beatles version of the popular Rock Band…
Saúl Hernández and his fellow Jaguares. Jaguares are among the most popular bands in Mexico, as well as the standard-bearer in this country of the rock en español movement. But the band’s frontman, singer-songwriter Saúl Hernández, would prefer to be seen as one of the people rather than their leader…
Enjoy a free Dr. Pepper, thanks to Guns ‘N’ Roses finally getting their shit together Here’s a guide to all the excellent content you might have overlooked on Backbeat Online this week, while you were busy dealing with the dual shocks of hearing that not only would the eternally delayed…
In the October 23 issue we posted excerpts of Tom Murphy’s recent conversation with Diplo (aka Wesley Pentz). The quotes used in that piece were taken from the following interview posted after the jump, in which Diplo Mad Decent, his record label and Heaps Decent, a program devoted to underprivileged…
Disco doesn’t suck so bad now that it’s saving your sorry ass, does it? Here’s a user-friendly guide to all of the top-notch content you might have missed out on while you were busy this week practicing your CPR skills to the beat of the disco classic “Staying Alive”…..
Christian Bland, guitarist and occasional vocalist for the Black Angels — Austin, TX’s leading psych-rock band — knows his evil ’60s rock. From the Velvet Underground to Syd Barrett to the 13th Floor Elevators, Bland and his bandmates dig the slow-churning, drone-filled jams that highlighted the darkside of the decade…
Dressy Bessy. Denver’s Dressy Bessy was first profiled in Westword a decade ago; click here to read the original piece. However, Tammy Ealom, who fronts the group, is as creatively vibrant and vital as ever. She makes that clear in “After an Extended break, Dressy Bessy’s Tammy Ealom Feels Like…
Senator McCain, that song is not about you Here’s a round-up of all the great content you missed this week on Backbeat Online while you were busy following the saga of yet another band — the Foo Fighters — getting pissed about the McCain campaign using one of their songs…
In the October 9 issue, we ran excerpts of Tom Murphy’s recent interview with Tim Gane from Stereolab. The following is the transcript from their entire conversation…
Deerhoof is weird. When the Bay Area experimental indie-pop outfit opened for Radiohead in Berkeley two years ago, Thom Yorke thanked them during his band’s set with a caveat that included pointing to his oddly-shaped head and making the twirling motion that connotes “crazy.” Yorke’s got a point: For a…
Rob Swire with the rest of Pendulum. Rob Swire, a singer, producer and multi-instrumentalist for Pendulum, has done a lot of moving around, both musically and physically. The band got started in his native Australia before relocating to England — and now Swire and company are hoping to conquer the…
Due to a crippling, worldwide shortage of seventeen-minute solos, Phish has decided to reform Here’s a friendly, easy-to-use index to all the great content you might have missed this week on Backbeat Online while you were busy doing that weird stoner hippie dance in celebration of the recent news that…
The Cold War Kids take a seat. The Cold War Kids stop by the Boulder Theater on Friday, October 3, in support of Loyalty to Loyalty, a new recording reviewed here. However, the band was first featured in Westword in a March 2007 profile built on an intriguing e-mail interview…
Two sides of David Berman. E-mail interviews can be a drag unless the person providing A’s to the Q’s takes the time to respond in an interesting and thoughtful way. Fortunately, we’ve gotten lucky lately, first with Santogold’s Santi White, and now with David Berman of Silver Jews, the subject…
‘It’ll be worth the wait, baby. I promise.” Here’s a handy wrap-up of all the great content you might have overlooked this week on Backbeat Online while you were consumed with wailing and gnashing your teeth over the tragic news that Britney Spears new single would be delayed…..
Santi White and/or Santogold. As artists’ careers get hotter, they become much tougher to pin down. Example? Santi White of Santogold, who headlines the Wednesday, October 1 MySpace Music event at the Gothic Theatre co-starring Mates of State, Low Vs. Diamond and Trouble Andrew (click here to learn more). Several…
Sigur Ros’s brand of musical minimalism eschews conventional structures, familiar formulas and lyrical language, resulting in an emotive form of ambient dream pop, which relies on fluid textures, open-ended forms and an invented idiom of gibberish, branded Vonlenska by the band, for its surreal effect. The band’s latest studio album,…
