There is a curse attached to the U.K.’s coveted Mercury Music Prize, commonly referred to as “mercury poisoning.” Previous winners like Roni Size, Talvin Singh and Badly Drawn Boy have been doomed with a steady decline in album sales and label support. Gomez is one of those bands, but it’s…
Erasure’s Union Street, a CD featuring semi-obscure tracks from the veteran synth band’s past as rendered on acoustic instruments, has earned a handful of negative notices — including one printed in these very pages. Last month, reviewer Jason Heller dismissed the disc as a “joke,” ending his assessment with the…
Maybe it’s the seizure that opens the mega-hit “Crazy” — four solid punches of bass drum marking the track’s unyielding tempo — that hints at the precarious character of Gnarls Barkley. The frenzied timbre of that voice rising to the conceit of the chorus’s question: “Does that make me crazy?”…
Last Name: Keenan First Name: Maynard Position You Are Applying For: Jizz Mopper Why You’re a Perfect Fit at Happy Endings Adult Video: I really should just attach a copy of my latest album, 10,000 Days. On this album, I prove to everyone that my band, Tool, is the ultimate…
On “I’m Ready,” an early track from the Twilight Singers’ latest, Greg Dulli serves sex straight up, with a bittersweet chaser. Rather than crooning “I’m ready to love somebody” with bedroom bravado, the ex-Afghan Whigs frontman ups the sleaze factor via just-this-side-of-miserable vocals and a lyrical hint that he wants…
What the world needs is more white people playing rock music, because frankly, there are just not enough third- and fourth-generation garage-rock bands to go around anymore. The rations of Clash-meets-Gang-of-Four up-tempo crack is running low — and dammit, the kids aren’t all right. Thank heavens, then, for the Rakes,…
Andy Monley is a Denver-scene veteran, having served time with Jux County, the Czars and the Velveteen Monster. Some artists who’ve been around over such a long haul merely go through the motions — a chore that becomes more difficult depending on how much rust is on them. Not Monley,…
Everything is beautiful all the time. Say it again: Everything is beautiful all the time. If ever there was a collection of words that were meant to be together, it would be those six. And if ever there was a band that could aurally and successfully embody that mantra, it…
Les Claypool, Of Whales and Woe (Prawn Song Records). Like him or not, Les Claypool has a singular vision. And luckily (or unluckily), he doesn’t steer too far from it here. Of Whales and Woe is full of half-sung, half-spoken ditties about wacky characters, “Vernon the Company Man” being a…
The number of pasty young men with petty post-rock ambitions could populate a small city. Behold Mopetopia, where overly sensitive souls while away the gray-dappled hours, thumbing through dog-eared copies of Schopenhauer, journaling ad nauseam or sobbing quietly into their chamomile tea. Enter Rahim, a New York-based three-piece that dwells…
Revolting Cocks are a rivethead’s wet dream. The act has been retrofitted again and again with some of industrial music’s elite since its inception in 1985 by Al Jourgensen (that guy from Ministry), Richard 23 (that other guy from Front 242) and Luc Van Acker (a Belgian). Although Van Acker…
Declaring a moratorium on bands influenced by the post-punk sound of the late ’70s and early ’80s seems like a fine idea. After all, how much more danceable depression can the average music fan take before he pulls on his Ian Curtis T-shirt and hangs himself? And yet this plan…
Releasing a “mature” followup to their acclaimed 2003 debut could have been a total disaster for ex-Unicorns Nick Diamonds and Jaime Tambeu. Considering that the Montreal group’s unpredictable song structures and amateurish, lo-fi charm were what initially earned it so much praise, the decision to disband the Unicorns, start anew…
It’s safe to assume that nobody needs an introduction to the Atomic Dog, aka Dr. Funkenstein, aka Uncle Jam. George Clinton’s influence on pop, rock and hip-hop is far too profound to detail here. But you know that, right? You might also have realized his music is as scathingly political…
After all these years, Gary Holt is still pissed off. As the founder of prototypical Bay Area thrash outfit Exodus, the dexterous guitarist and songwriter has spewed enough bile and venom over the past two decades to provide an alternative fuel. In a world of church-sanctioned pedophilia and corporate-sponsored wars…
When it rains, it pours, and for Portland-based Kind of Like Spitting, it’s been a never-ending drizzle of singer-songwriter wishy-wash. Ben Barnett spat out the first incarnation of Kind of Like Spitting nearly a decade ago and has kept the dream alive with rotating members both on and off the…
To be a musician and hail from New Orleans this year is to have the world’s ear — up to a point. That very same world would probably demand that your group have some kind of universally recognizable blues or R&B packed away in its rowboat and expect that you…
Screamo is so, like, two years ago. Snotty, screeching vocals and wizard-tech guitar has mostly been abandoned by the underground (save for those adorable hangers-on) and cast aside for the unholy depths of slow and heavy musical montages. Doom metal is hot — as in fires-of-hell hot. And that’s where…
Ron D. Core — who’s slated to appear at the Aztlan Theatre this Saturday, May 13 — has been pushing hardcore and gabber sounds out of his home base in Los Angeles for fifteen years now, and is one of the defining names not only in hardcore, but in the…
Art Brut has spent most of its short career being lauded by the British press as too-cool Johnny Rotten types ripe with delicious sarcasm and satire. The act’s first single was the matter-of-factly titled “Formed a Band,” in which lead vocalist Eddie Argos squeals, “Formed a band/Look at us, we…
Sitting in a hotel bar overlooking downtown Denver, Vinnie Paul Abbott is stunned that not a single TV is tuned to the hockey game. His boys, the Dallas Stars, are taking an ass-whuppin’ at the hands of the Avalanche — or so Big Vin tells me — and he’d like…
In February, computer-savvy fans of the Los Angeles hip-hop duo called People Under the Stairs were psyched to discover what appeared to be a leak from Stepfather, a project released in April. But those who downloaded it probably wondered if the group should change its name to People Under the…
