You could finish repaving Clematis Street with all the hyphens: Happy Anarchy is the indie-brass-pub-emo-anthem-jam-rock band you’ve always craved but never thought possible. Hailing from Staten Island, New York, this energetic eight-piece plays the kind of broad-minded music that usually slips through the cracks because of bogus attempts at categorization…
Glasgow, Scotland, is a well-respected center of music and culture, having birthed such native sons/daughters as Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai, the Pastels, Bis, the Delgados, and Teenage Fanclub. None of these bands sound alike; the only thing they really have in common is critical acclaim and rabid cult followings. Where…
The year was 1979. The sound was disco, and the place was Opal Studios, a Manhattan recording house located a few floors above the legendary Studio 54. Perched behind a massive synthesizer, a 25-year-old music-composition student named Gary Davis was working on a slick dance number he’d just written. Davis…
THU 29 You might think it’s a strange idea to celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month with a topless party, but if you’ve ever seen Salma… What’s that? You say it’s a tapas party. Ohhh. That makes loads more sense for an event hosted by the Boca Raton Museum of Art…
All vivacious jangle, thigh-slapping stomp, and grinning, good-ol’-boy charm, North Mississippi All Stars are the band Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer would’ve started if they knew where to get an electric guitar. Not to say that NMA’s fourth effort is at all rustic or simple: On the contrary, its compact,…
Thanks to the advent of sound-looping technology, the traditional one-man band can now multiply himself into a veritable one-man symphony. But even with the coolest, newest toys, you have to have serious chops and an innovative approach to keep an audience rapt and dancing all by yourself. That’s where Keller…
There are only two places on Earth with the right mix of ethnic and urban influences to spawn a band like Yerba Buena: Miami and New York. This Latin-leaning, multiculti seven-piece actually has roots in both cities, though Manhattan has served as its home and launching pad for world domination…
To those rockist stiffs who claim that all jam bands are talentless wankers: Your argument is wholly nullified by Garaj Mahal. This four-piece supergroup is made up of well-credentialed, veteran virtuosos from San Francisco and Chicago who get off on slapping around their extensive jazz background with rubbery improv and…
It’s another Friday night at Club M, and another local band throws down a hard-rocking set to unfazed regulars. Despite the swaggering, white-boy funkitude coming from the Bittercups — helmed by New Times staffer Jason Budjinski — the crowd reaction consists mostly of arched eyebrows, crossed arms, and trips to…
There was a point a few years back when hip-hop and hipsterism collided. It was inevitable: the music had spread from the inner city to the suburbs, and rather than turntables and old-school samplers, new acolytes took up laptops and actual instruments to voice their vision of hip-hop’s future. At…
Athens may be best known as the brainy birthplace of quirk-pop outfits like R.E.M. and the B-52s, but the Georgia college town is also home to a whole different musical current. Athens’ forward-looking fusion scene has spawned well-known bands like Sound Tribe Sector 9 and Dubconscious, and the heavy-soul funk-hoppers…
In a world where metal bands measure their bravery in terms of inane shock and menacing poses, Napalm Death frontman Mark “Barney” Greenway is a man made of real guts. A self-proclaimed “card-carrying pinko socialist,” Greenway isn’t shy about his left-wing views (or his love of the band Journey). He…
Last Wednesday’s sold-out crowd at Mizner Park was floating along on a sea of huge beers and pungent weed. SoFla’s notoriously rambunctious audience was in full form, with brawny dudes high-fiving and bleach-blond Bettys woo-hooing to Jack Johnson’s mellowed, front-porch acousticisms. As casual and assured as the North Shore breeze…
The truly dedicated know that music is more than a means to good times and a little escapism — at its best, it can be a powerful unifying force and a conduit for a community’s conscience. This past spring, the local music scene came together to raise money and awareness…
The recent passing of Six Feet Under, HBO’s morbidly profound funeral-home drama, brings an opportunity for reflection on our music scene’s vitality. For residents of the Mississippi Delta, religious pilgrims in Iraq, and felonious record moguls in Miami, it’s been a rough couple of weeks. But for right now, we’re…
Just because singer Stavros Polentas garbles his words like a shit-tanked, heartbroken Joe Strummer doesn’t mean Secret French Kissing Society sounds anything close to the Clash. On the contrary, despite Polentas’ obvious, loutish affectations, he writes profoundly powerful, cinematic, alt-rock vignettes, gothic tales of harsh life, harsher love, and unlikely…
All the media attention that’s been heaped on pop-rockers Rilo Kiley since the release of their third album, 2004’s More Adventurous, may have induced a sense of déjà vu for the band’s two principals. After all, singer Jenny Lewis and guitarist/vocalist Blake Sennet established their showbiz cred as child stars…
At the head of the borderland movement of Tijuana, Mexico, is a group of musicians, VJs, filmmakers, and graphic designers known as Nortec Collective. Nortec’s name, like its art, is a fusion of First and Third World elements and explains the group’s approach to making music. Norteño is a form…
When William Elliott Whitmore sings, “It was the year of aught-one/And our life had begun/No perils could make us this strong,” it’s a toss-up as to what century he’s referring to. His Hymns for the Hopeless swims in time-warped currents of naked Mississippi blues, junkyard percussion, gospel harmony, and ragged…
A few days spent wallowing in MTV/VMA/MIA hysteria can leave even the most pie-eyed, pop-culture devotee a jaded crank. Beatcomber has always settled somewhere between starstruck and cynical, and after all the hobnobbing, cocktailing, and white-carpeting, he feels even more divided. Celebrity is indeed a stiff intoxicant, but it leaves…
Recently declared “the coolest record label on Earth” by Riviera magazine, California’s Ubiquity Records should eclipse perennial UK slicksters Ninja Tune in the forward-looking hip-hop game. Ubiquity’s banner-carriers in that arena are the Detroit production duo of Waajeed and Saadiq, better-known as the Platinum Pied Pipers. Years before they had…
What could be a better entrée to Jack Johnson’s low-key California strumming than one of the beach-bum heartthrob’s favorite bands? Given its shared dedication to sand-in-the-sandals, brushfire fairytales, it’s no surprise Jack handpicked ALO (short for Animal Liberation Orchestra — not a PETA action group but a band intent on…
