Last week, as I watched the latest excruciating installment of American Idol, I noticed a common thread in each wannabe’s performance. One after another, these hopefuls defiantly proclaimed that their friends and family had assured them they had amazing voices. All evidence to the contrary. That clinically insane broad from…
Knuckle Down comes with a precious, fancy-papered chapbook stapled into the middle of it. Filled with bare lyrics and even barer pencil sketches, it’s the perfect manifestation of everything that sucks about Ani DiFranco: pseudo-literary pretension, coffeehouse glibness and the false impression that she’s some kind of grassroots underdog rather…
Genius rarely runs in the family. Jakob Dylan can’t hold a candle to his dad’s work without going up in flames, and it’s best not to even think about Wilson Phillips. Fortunately, the daughter of Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle is an anomaly. Martha Wainwright plays unique, captivating, rock-ous…
You’d have a hard time finding a link between the abrasively lysergic Comets on Fire and the sinisterly ambient Current 93. But over the last year, Ben Chasny has joined both bands — and that makes a weird sort of sense, seeing as how his main gig, Six Organs of…
Dr. Dre has discovered a foolproof method for creating superstars. First he casts an unknown with the right profile — in this case, Jayceon Taylor, who hails from Compton (the hood with Attitude!), used to deal (dope!) and has been shot five times (hit the charts with a bullet!). Then…
Why are adolescent R&B specialists generally more tolerable than their pop-tart counterparts? Because performers like Mario, a teen who’s already received Clive Davis’s stamp of approval, are encouraged to broaden their music’s appeal rather than focus it on the demographic whose members still wistfully fantasize about their first pubic hair…
Dissonance trumps exotica when Quintron, New Orleans’s favorite ninth-ward inventor and one-man lounge act, further explores the sounds made possible through cheap, modified tube organs. And if that’s not enough, the “Amazing Spellcaster” also busts out his drum buddy — a hand-built device that transforms rhythmic light-exposure patterns into percussion…
While difficult to hang a genre on this coaster, it’s hard not to like the musical product of James Brown axman Damon Wood and company. Wood struts his road-tested guitar stuff on Space Cadet and demonstrates creative songwriting ability from track to track, weaving funk, blues, reggae, soul and psychedelia…
New Jersey transplant Dave Lichtenberg, the bundle of nerves behind “I Want an Ugly Girl” and “Useless Shit,” has always performed under his alter ego with the spaz meter running full throttle. Still, extolling life at the bottom, where it’s just as lonely, Little Fyodor presents a live album that…
A friend recently dismissed Bowling for Soup (below) with the sneering comment “They’re punk rock for girls” — by which he meant preteen girls, the kind who pretend they don’t dig JoJo, even though they do, and think Eminem’s “Mockingbird” is the most searing personal statement ever committed to plastic…
When Michael Shepard sings, even broken legs sound beautiful. His is a boyish lilt that could float on water. At times the Lovedrug frontman’s voice quivers like a toddler’s upper lip; at others it sounds like a daydream becoming a nightmare. Shepard is the entry point to Lovedrug’s pretty, progressive…
The Wrens’ “Authorized Biography (of Sorts),” accessible at www.wrens.com, tells the kind of music-biz story that’s hilarious to anyone who didn’t live through it. New Jersey-based comrades Greg and Kevin Whelan, Charles Bissell and Jerry MacDonnell enjoyed recording for tiny Grass Records until the label was purchased by Alan Meltzer,…
Scores of independent labels succumbed to the ska implosion of the late ’90s. Asian Man Records — one of the most visible and successful proponents of third-wave ska — was one of the fortunate few. But luck isn’t the only reason Asian Man’s owner, Mike Park, is a survivor; the…
“Fuckin’ A” may be the most wonderfully ridiculous expletive around these days. Is it self-censorship of that unutterable “A”? And what the hell is the “A,” anyhow? Perplexing. But given that the Thermals may be the most wonderfully ridiculous punk-rockers around these days, it’s fitting that the act’s latest record,…
When Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard started a little side project called the Postal Service, Barsuk, Death Cab’s label at the time, probably didn’t bat an eye. A few hundred thousand moved units later, the imprint probably wished liked hell it had snapped up the Service when it had…
You don’t have to be “In the Navy” (where “you can sail the seven seas”!) to enjoy the classic kitsch of the Village People. Whether you like them or not, the songs of this quintessential costumed group stick in your cerebral cortex. The cop, the cowboy, the construction worker, the…
When Cammie O’Nassis of Mannequin Makeout squeals, “Dance mania! Dance mania!,” you’d better believe it. The coed Boulder outfit injects urgency and fun into rigid dance punk, discarding slick beats and airtight production for a raw, rabid sound that scrapes grease off the garage floor and favors clunky Casios and…
On Friday, January 28, milehighhouse founder Tom Hoch will host a shindig at Vinyl to celebrate his crew’s fifth anniversary. Barcelona DJ Murray Richardson, whose brand of deep, funky tech house has kept him in demand worldwide, is headlining the party, which will also feature Hoch and his fellow housemates…
Even though Jolie Holland pads her nest with jazz, folk and blues, she can’t be pigeonholed. Sometimes the 29-year-old singer-songwriter hunts for a new morning worm in the form of gospel, swing, lounge music or the occasional Civil War anthem. You might say she’s a weird bird. Then again, Holland…
Judging from the last presidential election, not many Americans are ready to make Will and Grace as welcome in their neighborhoods as Ozzie and Harriet. The passage of legislation to tighten the definition of marriage suggests that being out of the closet in America may be acceptable only as long…
It’s five o’clock Monday, January 17: Do you know where your beats are? If you’re like most savvy digital-music fans, your beats are on your desktop or iPod, courtesy of iTunes, eMusic or any of the countless other digital dealers online. Dance-music enthusiasts, however, know that the hottest beats come…
With synth pop making an unexpected comeback, the timing couldn’t be better for a new Erasure album. Vince Clarke’s infectious recordings with Depeche Mode, Yaz, the Assembly and, of course, Erasure helped create the blueprint for electronic dance pop, while Andy Bell’s soulful vocals and flamboyant persona added a critical…
