Music

Boston’s Victory at Sea makes brooding, seductive rock for smoky bars everywhere. Mona Elliott channels PJ Harvey and Sally Norvell with her torchy cabaret voice and poignant lyrics, while Taro Hatanaka’s violin wails and moans plaintively. Dave Norton’s tentative drumming heightens the tension as Mel Lederman’s electric piano adds a…

Everybody loves a happy ending — especially fans of the newly reunited duo of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith. Their Tears for Fears created a soundtrack for the early ’80s, complete with catchy pop rock, synthesizer melodies and overt references to primal-scream therapy — not just in the act’s name,…

Some bands come into this world fully formed, moving with fluid ease across the stage as if the lights and wires and racket of a rock show were their natural habitat. Constellations is definitely not one of those bands. With all the poise of a polio-stricken baby giraffe, the quartet…

Richard West, aka Mr. C, has played a pivotal role in dance music since the late ’80s. His first DJ experiences came by way of the R.I.P. and Base events in London, some of the earliest illegal acid-house parties in rave culture. Then, as the frontman for dance-rock pioneers the…

At this moment, Drop the Fear’s biggest fan is a grizzled man in an Army jacket standing on the sidewalk outside the Satire Lounge on East Colfax. He’s never heard the band. In fact, he’s never heard of the band. But he’s a huge fan, nonetheless. “Thanks, man. Thanks!” he…

Life is a work of art,” says Amanda Palmer. “It’s all art — from how you decorate, to how you treat other people, to how you cook your food.” Listening to Palmer’s contributions as one-half of the Boston-based duo the Dresden Dolls, there’s no question that she knows art. But…

De La Soul is not dead. Sure, it’s been a while since anyone has heard from the legendary rap trio, but the goodfellas from Long Island are back with a new label and a new album, and they’re ready to teach the world a thing or two about hip-hop –…

Although corporate radio stations still suck a king-sized kielbasa, bashing them is almost as futile as cursing the bus driver who transports murderers and rapists from one hoosegow to another. They’re just doing their job, man. For its part, however, KTCL is taking major steps to make things a little…

Few things in life are as fulfilling as loss. Really, people thrive on it. Sometimes, it even seems that any period of contentment we’re lucky enough to have is just dead time, a spell of suspended animation that lasts until some catastrophe comes along and shocks us back to life…

The Ocean Blue’s dreamy, melodic approach has changed little in the more than fifteen years since Hershey, Pennsylvania’s second-sweetest export committed its lush sound to vinyl. Waterworks stays that successful course with six gleaming and ethereal gems that simultaneously inspire hopeful stargazing and forlorn shoegazing while never taking themselves too…

Although Duran Duran holds a noteworthy place in pop history because of the way it encapsulated the appeal of early MTV, it’s important to remember that, musically speaking, Simon LeBon and company were never very memorable. Okay, a handful of their songs were entertainingly silly, and because the videos that…

Moving at the speed of a glacier, Knife & Fork deploys an electro-torch sound that skirts genres as varied as experimental ambient and the Gregorian blues. Melancholic Laurie Hall, who helms the Bay Area’s Ovarian Trolley, possesses a cystalline yet downbeat voice that transports her emotional baggage through customs without…

Tom Waits evolved from the engaging but seemingly predictable barroom growler of 1973’s Closing Time to the artistic bomb thrower of 1983’s Swordfishtrombones in one astonishing decade — the rarest sort of creative transformation. Since then, he’s grappled with the implications of his innovations, and while the discs he’s made…

Audits, supposedly, are about as pleasurable as a tube of Super Glue squeezed down your urethra. So it’s funny that Audit in Progress, the third full-length by Hot Snakes (appearing Thursday, November 4, at the Bluebird Theater), is the band’s least pain-inflicting release to date. Not that it doesn’t try…

Since the invention of recording technology, party bands have struggled to translate the good times they generate live into a product fans can get the same jolt from at home. In-concert fave Yo, Flaco! faces this challenge head-on throughout The Skinny, whose arrival the group will celebrate on Friday, November…

Listening to Porch Thinkin’, you get the sense that Arkansas Bo was one of those cats that got along with everybody in high school. He’s witty, funny, intelligent and more fun to hang out with than pretty much everyone else. And that persona translates well to his debut disc. Although…

Drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare are not only reggae’s definitive rhythm section and production team, but they’ve worked with every major artist in Jamaica, from Jimmy Cliff, Culture and Peter Tosh to U-Roy, Grace Jones and Beenie Man. Internationally, the pair has provided the crucial bottom end for…

Martial-arts master Bruce Lee believed in “using no way as the way, no limitation as the only limitation.” Jeet Kune Do, the free-form fighting philosophy first conceived by Lee in 1967, was not a rigid list of stylistic rules, but rather a creative method of incorporating the most effective elements…

Those of you who hate Big Toby’s right-wing orthodoxy are making a mistake if you reject his music, too. Sure, he’s got a reactionary streak an acre wide, but so do Merle Haggard and plenty of other country artists worth hearing. Dismissing him because he’s not the Dixie Chicks’ ideological…

There’s nothing better than having your frontman fuck up in public, especially when your band is about to release a new album. Jason Stollsteimer let Jack White go smack-my-bitch-up on his face, and suddenly the Von Bondies became positively anticipated. Likewise, Jeff Tweedy checked into rehab for painkiller addiction and…

Though its shtick of gross-out lyrics, lightning-fast riffs and truly vile artwork should have worn thin by now, Cannibal Corpse is still the most extreme and unflinching band in death metal. Though some of the faces have changed, the Buffalo-based quintet’s sound is much the same today as it was…