For many people, funk revivalists deserve only scorn for disturbing a genre that’s been sacredly entombed — unless their efforts are filtered through contemporary visionaries like Prince or the Roots. And it’s irrational and confining that certain musical-history threads, such as Motown, dead-end, while others, like ’80s synthpop, get tragically…
Despite the constant pressure on veteran female artists not to act their age, Marianne Faithfull refuses to disguise the wear and tear caused by her four decades in rock. She eschews surgical enhancement, and her ragged voice often sounds downright ancient — although “timeless” is a better way to describe…
Does this ring a bell? A small-town band with a three-letter name attains cult status by issuing a string of entrancing albums full of cryptic jangle and mumbling majesty. Bored, the group eventually starts to tinker with the very formula that put it on the indie-rock map. Yes, Low has…
Skits have been endemic on hip-hop CDs since the days when flattops were a fashion statement, yet they’re almost always lame — which explains why the between-songs material that peppers the debut by Cash Money co-founder Fresh is so surprising. Astonishingly enough, several of the routines stand as highlights of…
Maybe all the dance-punk plasticity and garage-rock cock-grabbing of the last few years are starting to take their toll, but there’s been a new trend bubbling up from the underground lately: simple, drunken earnestness. If it catches on (yeah, right), the Enablers are going to win a ton of Grammys…
KBCO gets plenty of attention for its Studio C discs, largely because they feature national touring acts in off-the-cuff settings. In contrast, the Mountain’s Homegrown series focuses on local performers who aspire to the bigtime but haven’t experienced it yet. Although V.02 doesn’t give a real sense of this area’s…
It may be hazardous to give less than a shining review to a rockabilly band — after all, the guys in the CD booklet look like total bruisers — but here goes: Slingshot misses the target. The third release by Englewood’s Paul Galaxy and the Galactix is a stab at…
The gloomy, Americana-inflected slowcore of Bloomington, Indiana’s Early Day Miners could be the soundtrack to a lost Jim Jarmusch film or the anthem for a forgotten Nevada ghost town. On their latest Secretly Canadian release, the stark All Harm Ends Here, vocals rarely rise above a mumble, instruments are played…
After lighting the fuse for the hip-hop explosion more than two decades ago, Russell Simmons has extended his Defness to the Def Poetry Jam tour, coming straight from Broadway. With rhymes as diverse as the poets, Russell’s Jam has gone global, championing poetry competitions everywhere. This most slamming of poetry…
Twenty-something viewers of typical VH1 programming — the stuff in which desperate comics make wisecracks about pop-culture topics they only pretend to remember — can be forgiven for assuming that Biz Markie was the William Hung of his era. After all, the Markie moment most often spotlighted is the 1989…
From Gummo to Roger and Me, the rusted infrastructure and trailer-park peculiarity of the Midwest has been a font of much present-day mythology. But beneath all that John Deere-cap patronizing lies a fixation on the geographic and moral core of America — it is the heartland, after all. But what…
Before the Album Leaf’s Jimmy Lavelle started hobnobbing with Sigur Ros, he played in a few little bands in San Diego: the Locust, GoGoGo Airheart, Black Heart Procession and Tristeza. And although Tristeza — minus its superstar since 2003 — has been treading water over the past few years, there’s…
There’s no good reason why New York’s Hem isn’t the biggest band in America. Last year’s Eveningland — with Gary Maurer’s and Dan Messé’s heartbreakingly beautiful songs, Sally Ellyson’s vulnerable-yet-vibrant crooning and a sound so lush you could sink right into it — is still stuck stubbornly in the CD…
How influential is Richard Quitevis, aka Qbert, as a turntablist? Well, he’s often credited with inventing the term — an important and necessary accomplishment, because the old lexicon didn’t contain words that adequately described his distinctive brand of artistry. As a key member of the Invisbl Skratch Piklz, a groundbreaking…
Few Denver bands can boast of having a palindrome for a name — let alone one cooked up at a brainstorming session with Courtney Taylor of the Dandy Warhols. But CAT-A-TAC can. A late-night bender with the Warhols’ notorious frontman a couple of years ago led to the flip-flop-able moniker,…
Ali Shirazinia and Sharam Tayebi, better known as Deep Dish, made their initial mark in the ’90s as deep-house producers and DJs — despite the fact that the two have never aligned themselves with any one specific genre or scene. Although Shirazinia and Tayebi’s productions take on the epic, soulful…
Long-distance relationships suck. Without a constant stream of casual intimacy, the lines strung between lovers start to short-circuit and fray. Phone calls sound forced. E-mails read like laundry lists of halfhearted flirtations. All those Xs and Os begin to cancel each other out. Other people — those who you can…
Denver seems that it’s always trying to legitimize itself as a music town, like, ‘This band will be the one to put Denver on the map,'” says Chris Barber, who runs his own label, Pop Sweatshop, and leads a group called Spiv. “But Denver’s already on the map. I’ve played…
Okay, hands up: Who here hates neo-country? Yeah, me, too. But not everyone detests it. In fact, KYGO — which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year — consistently finishes in the top three in the Abitron ratings. “I set my alarm to it, believe it or not,” confesses local troubadour…
If having your heart ripped out through your eyes, stretched tightly around your head and shoved back in through your ears is your idea of a party, then you’re invited to High on Fire’s next shindig in hell. On Blessed Black Wings, Matt Pike and crew take their neuron-scrambling Motrhead-meets-Clutch-in-Sabbath’s-garage…
Anthony Gonzalez lives in Antibes, France, but if you didn’t know that, you’d swear M83’s mastermind was from fucking Pluto. He’s like the Little Prince, ensconced on his tiny planet of solitude and ice, transmitting the occasional broadcast of bleak atmosphere and barren loveliness. Before the Dawn Heals Us is…
The youngest MTV viewers know Xzibit primarily as the host of Pimp My Ride, in which he comes across as the benign, good-humored benefactor of shitbox autos. Musically, though, his grin turns to grim on a regular basis. Weapons is characteristic of his work: a spare, stern hip-hop foray that…
