If you’re going to say something, make sure you have something worth saying. More to the point, decrees the title track of Talkatif, the latest release from the politically minded Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, is “Diarrhea mouth/Constipation brain/No more talking.” The big band, whose members wield instruments like weapons of peace,…

Football, apple pie, baseball caps, and deathly secretive same-sex encounters in the locker room — these things were once “All-American” until some of the boys rejected these rites of flowering manhood. Then they grew their hair long and picked up a guitar. As it turns out, rejection is just as…

When big money alt-rockers get that hunted feeling in their pool grottos, they might turn around to see the tip of Carrie Brownstein’s six-string rising from the water like a fin. The Sleater-Kinney guitarist’s talent transcends boundaries (if not bodies of water). Rolling Stone even compared her to Jimmy Page…

The Postal Service should consider itself the lead candidate as the official band of long-distance relationships. Death Cab for Cutie’s Benjamin Gibbard (from Seattle) and Dntel’s Jimmy Tamborello (from L.A.) met when their bands were touring and remained in touch, sending each other piecemeal musical parcels like ‘tweens caught up…

In 1989, Ani DiFranco released her self-titled debut album. Her photo showed a shaved head with brows and eyes arched like question marks on a young face, seeking an answer to youth’s eternal question: Who will I become? There was heat from the friction of taped fingers rubbing off their…

Rock is a genre that made a name for itself by being mouthy. So what would happen if the lead singer — who so often dictates the attitude of a rock band — were suddenly to disappear, leaving the music to convey its message without language, in an egalitarian symphony…

Venus Hum, a Tennessee trio that includes not a single guitar, actually derives its name from what is possibly the coolest medical condition since narcolepsy: Tony Miracle, credited with computers and electronics, hears the pulse from his jugular vein in his ear. Hummingbirds contains three re-recordings from the band’s first…

As America searched its soul after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Tori Amos searched America. The trip began that Tuesday morning in midtown Manhattan, where Amos stayed in a hotel before beginning her Strange Little Girls tour in South Florida a few weeks later. Traveling the country, she…

It’s high noon in the historic district of Delray Beach. Two members of the Yoko Theory, Nathan Farnham and Henri Lemaire, haven’t been awake for long, so they’re a little punchy. But after a brief exchange about wearing panties on-stage and whether New Times can print the word fuck, the…

Unlike the vast hordes of snowbirds, retirees, immigrants, exiles, and carpetbaggers who make up the bulk of the South Florida population, those born and raised here might actually feel some kinship with their fellow Floridians in towns north of Orlando. If you’re already acquainted with Central Florida’s politely combed orange…

Coldplay is a band you carry like an umbrella through the inclement weather of the soul, which may be why lead singer Chris Martin spent Coldplay’s first video, for a song called “Yellow,” on a gray beach in a rain jacket, singing high and low of the stars that shine…

Arranged in a semicircular bouquet of white gloves and tuxedos, 14 “gentlemen songsters” from Yale decorate the table of American culture with a cappella harmony almost a century in bloom. For the past 94 years, the Whiffenpoofs have passed on a musical tradition that includes classic ballads, jazz standards, and…

When one man gets so many people to move, he has to be considered a leader of some kind. Ministry of Sound favorite Paul van Dyk, a German producer, remixer, and DJ, must therefore be one of the biggest leaders in the electronic sound market. Bringing traditional song structure to…

Fifteen years ago in West Palm Beach, music and people were joined in a union that has lasted longer than the average broken marriage in this country (11 years, in case you’re curious). Respectable Street Cafe, one of the best venues in which to catch live independent musicians in South…

It’s the eve of Sneaker Pimps’ return to the United States, the country that yanked the band’s britches when it was busy reaching for the twinkling cup of fame in the late ’90s. Drummer David Westlake is reminiscing. “We lost our innocence on that tour, on every last level,” he…

So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter, Ani DiFranco’s second live double-disc package, makes the Recording Academy of Arts and Sciences look clueless. In 1999, the academy nominated DiFranco for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance but ended up giving the damn Grammy to Sheryl Crow for her cover of a Guns…

Astute indie listeners with ears to the ground have been rising up to call Rilo Kiley the best new American band of the year. The group’s reputation — including a habit of stealing shows — is ever-growing. Music journalists, having dragged their sprezzatura out to analyze the Breeders, Superchunk, or…