For those familiar with Brian Eno’s ambient music, his newest addition to the canon won’t come as a shock. Instead, it’s more of the soothing, almost-there quietude that made his classics Music for Airports or Thursday Afternoon such attractive shades of sonic wallpaper. Nowadays the 55-year-old composer and theorist finds…

By now, Jeff Mangum must be sick and tired of avoiding people. Since dumping his 1998 meisterwork (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea) on the ears of a grateful populace, the leader of Athens, Georgia’s, Neutral Milk Hotel has spent the past few years trying to live it down. By…

Platinum Bitch is the alter ego of Timothy Lazlo Sandor, a 29-year-old West Palm Beach-based musician who works at a drug treatment center. The 12 songs contained here, recorded at home with not much more than an acoustic guitar and a drum machine, create a mood that’s unsettling and more…

Quitters never win, figures Andrew Kenny. The mastermind behind Texas combo the American Analog Set was basically ready to put the nap-inducing band to bed this year. He’d planned to play a few more shows, maybe wrap things up with an odds ‘n’ sods catchall album, then finish his doctorate…

If you’ve read something in these pages about an upcoming event at the new Club Venu in downtown Fort Lauderdale, and, intrigued, decided to hoof it down there and check out a show… we apologize. God forbid you listened to us and took the plunge. Some fans grew suspicious not…

One is barely able to suppress nausea when taking in the expansive package that is Sleep with You, the new album from Miami’s ever-blustery Ed Hale and Transcendence. The costly and glossy gatefold sleeve is as lavishly appointed as a Carl’s showroom and every bit as tasteful. “I can give…

Every now and then, James Balyut has second thoughts about the name he’s chosen for his band. “It’s a publicist’s nightmare,” he worries, for when people see +/- written down, they might not get it. They might mistake it for battery terminals. Complicating matters further, Balyut says, is the fact…

Headgear is mighty important in this business. Which is what gives this upcoming double shot — a pair of area shows featuring Chicago blues legend Eddy “The Chief” Clearwater and that crazy quartet of surf avengers who call themselves Los Straitjackets — such drawing power. The 68-year-young Clearwater rarely appears…

The woman behind the counter was chipper, eager to help, and utterly clueless when Bandwidth requested Echo and the Bunnymen at the Plantation Barnes & Noble recently. In fact, the look of confusion she shot us indicated that our request was by far the weirdest thing she’d heard all day…

During the late 1970s, synthesizers were making major inroads in contemporary music but weren’t able to penetrate the suburbs where I grew up. Jimmy Page and Ritchie Blackmore were gods. John Foxx, a chisel-jawed singer with an English accent copied from David Bowie and Bryan Ferry, was an unwelcome interloper…

“Dude, I could just stand here and listen to this for the next two days!” — overheard at Respectable Street, Wednesday, November 5, 2003 Although we’ve attended many a show at Respectable Street in West Palm Beach, nothing in our tenure has approached the sight of the line down the…

It’s tempting to unconditionally dismiss Jamie “King” Colton as a leather-clad freakazoid. Maybe it’s the cover art for the Pompano Beach guitarist’s Strange Twist album (apparently rendered via Baby’s First Photoshop!) that dooms it before a note is struck. This one-man (plus a Flying V and a leather cowboy hat)…

Angry industrial rocker spews bile, noise, and venom, blah blah blah… what else is new? Suffering fools with conspicuous ingratitude, KMFDM bassist/vocalist/bandleader Sascha Konietzko seethes with resentment and rage from the beginning bombast of “WWIII,” the title track of the band’s newest album. It isn’t hard to discern the target…

It really took ZZ Top thirty-three years to come up with a song called “Liquor”?…

The work ethic ingrained in Death Cab for Cutie singer/guitarist Ben Gibbard is the sort Sly Stone never mastered. Gibbard, who is 27 years old, is already doing a phone interview at 9:30 this morning, even though he was up well past 3 a.m. Instead of sounding dull or half-awake,…

No doubt the novelty of being a hip-hop group from Bowling Green, Kentucky, played a large part in the success of Nappy Roots. Now that Goodie Mob is no more, the seven-member Nappy Roots has taken the role of Southern-victual champion. Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz, the band’s 2002 debut, represents…

When David Lee Parsons died of cancer in a Swiss hospital on September 23, he was only 58 years old. But in his relatively short life, Parsons had ventured across three continents, switched his gender, helped popularize the electric ukulele, worked with the Charlie Chaplin Estate in Switzerland as a…

It’s just another weekend in Margate, when the malls and Playstation-filled living rooms of this lowly suburb belch forth hordes of disaffected youth eager for cheap beer and loud music. Lucky for them, good old nappy-ass Mother’s Pub is in full compliance with the newly ratified Dive Bar Act. Every…

Finally putting the high back in Hialeah, Humbert goes against the pop-rock grain on its new CD, Plant the Trees Closer Together. Not that Humbert has gone hard on us, but this five-piece adds the unexpected to its usual power-chord fare. Gloriously goofy, Plant the Trees¹ 11 songs approach modern…

Every five minutes, rapper Mike West sticks a pair of fingers between his vertical blinds and peers out the window. A pair of drive-by auto detailers is in his driveway, giving West’s maroon Chevy Caprice the royal treatment. Operating from the back of a rundown van outfitted with a 150-gallon…