It’s never easy to win over an audience, especially when some of the attendees are actively hostile. Fortunately, the members of Panic! At the Disco have discovered a foolproof method to get on such a throng’s good side: Let some goon smack your lead singer in the noggin with a…
Classics, the second proper full-length from Brooklyn’s Ratatat, is a convivial collection of slashing electric guitars, on-point computer backbeats and dance- tastic instrumental fun. Every song sounds like an arena-rock show barebacking a dance party. On the heels of a recent high-profile show at the Guggenheim Museum in New York…
When Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple and her directing partner, Cecilia Peck, first approached the Dixie Chicks about making a documentary on the band, they were turned down. “We were really disappointed,” Kopple says of the initial rejection. “But then a few days later, they made the comment, and…
Back in the early ’70s, Eric Clapton — struggling out of drug addiction and pursuing a solo career — turned “Cocaine” and “After Midnight,” both JJ Cale songs, into radio staples that saved his floundering butt. Now, some three decades later, Clapton and Cale have joined forces on an album…
Although Army of Anyone features half of Stone Temple Pilots and former Filter lead singer Richard Patrick, the group’s whole isn’t greater than the sum of its parts. None of the tracks on Army’s debut smolders quite like Filter’s mid-’90s breakthrough “Hey Man, Nice Shot” or matches the catchiness of…
In this contrarian era, where post-punk has rebirthed disco, it seems that every self-respecting band needs a “Hot Chip” remix. Frankly, it’s a bit shocking that Gene Simmons hasn’t seen fit to issue a Tiga reworking of “Christine Sixteen.” For fans of the DFA sound, where rock and BPMs collide,…
MTV’s Laguna Beach was initially touted as “the real O.C. ” In truth, the program seems every bit as make-believe as its fictional inspiration — and the music on these tie-in comps feels similarly artificial, conjuring up a world of tawny women, buff dudes and relationship drama as gritty as…
Yerkish is a language created by experimental researchers to facilitate communication between chimpanzees and humans using geometric forms. And that’s about as apt a metaphor as you’ll find for this band’s approach to creating its music. Just as mathematics is the most direct approach that humans have devised to communicate…
Jason Vigil wears his Heart on his new CD’s cover, title track and every lyric he warbles. For that reason, his latest is sure to generate widely varied reactions. After spinning the disc, many listeners will relate to his every romantic complication, while others will feel the urge to do…
Joseph Arthur, Nuclear Daydream (Lonely Astronaut). Joseph Arthur is the most evocative, emotive performer and writer to surface in quite a while; think Bowie meets Conor Oberst. Arthur’s vocals and confessional writing style offer a peep-show peek into his troubled heart. — Mark Bliesener Phillip Bimstein, Larkin Gifford’s Harmonica (Starkland)…
While it may be an overstatement to say that Sepultura is the most influential death-metal band of all time, you’d be hard-pressed to find a likelier candidate. If nothing else, the act, which recently celebrated its 22nd anniversary, is certainly among the oldest death-metal outfits still going. One thing that…
Originally named after an early Brian Eno and Robert Fripp song called “Swastika Girls,” this Seattle band wisely settled on the more congenial moniker of Parenthetical Girls. Along with a shifting membership that includes Jherek Bischoff and Sam Mickens of the Dead Science, the Girls’ core consists of Jeremy Cooper…
After nearly two decades, the Bouncing Souls still sound enthusiastic and full of the wild, vivacious joy that first motivated them to pick up instruments as teenagers back in 1987. Pop punk is by nature a formulaic beast, and too many aging bands out there are clearly still playing only…
The stoner-rock movement should be deader than Felix Pappalardi by now. After all, the music was pretty dopey when it was new (back during the Lyndon Johnson administration). Yet the slothful tempos, leviathan riffs and echo-laden caterwauling that have long distinguished the form can still inspire anti-intellectual awe, especially when…
When legendary Studio One producer Clement “Sir Coxsone” Dodd died in 2004, he left behind a real legacy: Ska, widely considered to be the first truly Jamaican music, was among his most enduring creations. To pioneer the style — which combines the understated rhythms of 1960s R&B, jazzy horn sections…
New buzz bands tend to sound a helluva lot like the buzz bands that immediately preceded them — most of which have already lost their buzz or never really had much in the first place. Not so Wax on Radio, a Chicago act that draws from styles considerably more varied…
Well-versed in the kind of early-’90s shoegaze that typically took 27 guitar pedals and a British passport to create, Dirty on Purpose weaves those wobbly, blustery, mesmerizing tendrils of sound into arrangements so nicely crafted and highly melodic that you’re as likely to sing along with the act’s dreamy tunes…
The Haggardies’ debut full-length, So Good You’ll Think You’re Eating! (scheduled for release this Saturday, November 25, at the Bluebird Theater), will make you feel like you’ve jumped into a time machine and, for whatever reason, dialed up 1996, a time when ska-core seemed incredibly relevant and when hearing the…
What could be worse than getting brained by your bassist’s headstock in the middle of a set? How about having your cheek punctured by one of the tuning pegs, getting knocked unconscious and then coming to, choking on your own blood? That’s what happened to Fear Before the March of…
Acclaimed keyboardist Henry Butler had a great house in New Orleans. Located in the Gentilly neighborhood, it was big — 4,100 square feet — with a studio and plenty of room for his collection of musical instruments, including a 1925-vintage Mason & Hamlin piano that was among his most beloved…
On its self-titled debut EP, Lion Sized rips and roars its way through six loud songs of calculated, aggressive, minor-chord post-punk. Recorded live this past summer at Uneven Studios, the disc finds the trio — singer/songwriter Josh Bergstrand, bassist Duncan Barlow and drummer Rob Burleson (aka Number Three) — plowing…
File this one under “Stuff you need to know about to avoid cultural ostracism.” Cred Sheet is a periodic gauge of cultural stimuli for those unwilling or unable to think about this shit for a living 24/7. (Note: These people are most often smarter and better compensated than those who…
