With his spiky, dishwater-blond hair and jade-green eyes, you’d never suspect that Beto Hale is Mexican. But he is. The grandson of a Polish Jew who emigrated to Mexico in 1921, Hale is Mexican by birth, with Polish, French, Welsh, Irish and Scottish ancestry in his blood. He grew up…
Ion got its start in 2000 as a side project for former Blister 66 bassist and programmer Joe Sego and ex-Dropsound vocalist Noe De’Leon. By 2002, with the addition of Todd Schlafer, Rocket Ajax’s erstwhile axman, as well as guitarist Nik Lawhorn from Synthetic Delusion and Blister 66 drummer David…
If the line between genius and insanity is thin, Say Anything’s Max Bemis is walking it like a tightrope. He’s seen his opus, 2004’s Say Anything…Is a Real Boy, simultaneously catapult him onto a major label and give him a multiple-tour-canceling nervous breakdown. So Bemis yells. Not a tearful emo…
Since 1999, Fred Frith has served as the Luther B. Marchant Professor of Composition at Mills College in Oakland, California. But the British-born guitarist and avant-gardist admits that his credentials for the post are more experiential than academic. “In terms of education, most of my students are better qualified to…
The Flaming Lips’ latest was largely inspired by leader Wayne Coyne’s extreme dislike for President Bush — a fact that might have spoiled the fun for fans of every ideological description. After all, the delicate balance of beauty, wit and spaciness that’s marked the band’s recent work left no room…
Not long ago, Two Gallants was poised to be the next it band — lauded by the press for electrically lo-fi live performances and a debut full-length, 2004’s The Throes, that even Pitchfork and Vice couldn’t entirely dog with mean-spirited puns. A couple years later, with a few dozen tours…
Everything’s bad for you nowadays, and everything’s good: fat, meat, wine, carbs, caffeine. But while the medical community debates the comparative merits and perils of cardiovascular whatever, Eagles of Death Metal keep on making the greasiest high-calorie rock and roll conceivable. Death by Sexy is the second full-length from this…
Although Matisyahu has been around for a few years, the novelty factor is still high on his third album. After all, can you name another Orthodox Jewish dancehall star? But those who can handle a bespectacled, bearded, yarmulke-clad performer breaking it down, island style, will find that Youth quickly turns…
“Most songs I write get stuck in my head/It’s ’cause I listen to them too much, I guess.” With lyrics like these, it sounds as though Hunter Dragon’s sole member, Joshua Hunter, spends a little too much time wearing playback headphones in his home studio. Some do-it-yourself discs get done…
Singer/guitarist Randall Frazier and his cohorts don’t fit snugly within the confines of any identifiable Denver-music pigeonhole, and that’s a good thing, since there are more than enough pigeons in there already. Instead, Orbit Service sets its own course, hitting plenty of heights along the way. Rather than rushing to…
E-40, My Ghetto Report Card (Reprise/ BME). Lil Jon is the executive producer here, but he doesn’t drown this Bay Area veteran in Crunk Juice. Although Ghetto has its dirty-South moments, E-40’s amusingly twisted personality shines through on the likes of “Tell Me When to Go,” in which he notes…
What are you hungry for? Italian? Japanese? French? How about Croatian? Whatever your taste in international fare, the twelve-piece ensemble known as Pink Martini will be sure to satiate your desires and leave you longing for more of its multilingual musical alchemy. Founded in 1994 in Portland, Oregon, by the…
Traversing the country in a lumbering 1964 GMC tour bus — lovingly nicknamed Dirty Bird — the Hackensaw Boys know a thing or two about the open road. The ensemble, which seems to vary in numbers between six and twelve, has been crisscrossing the highways and truck stops of America…
The majority of artists regularly lumped into the neo-soul movement are more velvet than sandpaper, more Al Green than Wilson Pickett, and, in the case of Natalie Stewart and Marsha Ambrosius, the pair of Brits behind Floetry, more Magic Johnson than Shaquille O’Neal. The basketball analogy is apt, since Stewart…
At All Costs has a news flash for you: The American dream isn’t as rosy as it seems, and a bunch of big, bad men are making bank off the war against terror. Thankfully, the Austin-based quintet’s music is a little less obvious than its lyrical platitudes. It’s Time to…
In our post-post-post-post world, everything has been broken down, rebuilt and burnt to the ground. And yet the fractal factorials of sound still yield fresh ideas. Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong — the New York duo known as the Books — simultaneously create and destroy pop music with acoustic…
It’s been two and a half decades since Cocteau Twins concocted the formula, but there’s still something thrilling about a moody chanteuse backed by soaring, symphonic ambience. Headlights is the newest avatar of the form — and while its sound soars and sighs with the best of them, the trio…
Some interesting facts about San Francisco’s John Vanderslice: He once wrote a song called “Bill Gates Must Die,” then punk’d numerous national media outlets by crafting an amusing hoax claiming Microsoft was out to destroy him. He owns and operates the renowned Tiny Telephone recording studio — an all-analog joint…
In a 2001 interview with Westword, Morgan Lander, the then-teenage guitarist and lead shrieker for Canada’s Kittie, an all-female death-metal group, complained that reviewers were “treating us like we’ll never be seen again and we’re just a novelty.” Little did they know that Lander has a sharp business mind (“I…
The last time Astrophagus unleashed a CD, the outfit was known as the Moths, and its former bassist, Quentin Chirdon, was awaiting trial in Albuquerque on charges of armed robbery. But recently, singer/guitarist Jason Cain is the one who’s been logging some quality time in Oz. The frontman was arrested…
Gabriel and Dresden (aka Josh Gabriel and Dave Dresden) first worked together in 2001 remixing “Someone Like You,” by New Order. Impressed with the fledgling producer’s work, Dresden tapped Gabriel to help him rework the track. The San Francisco production duo has maintained a working relationship ever since and has…
For somebody who just got his teeth knocked out, Mike Damron looks no worse for wear. In fact, aside from slightly chipmunked cheeks, you’d never know the frontman of I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch in the House had just had his wisdom teeth pulled a few hours earlier. Damron is…
