Six Feet Under? What is this, a traveling version of the HBO series about a family that works at a funeral home? Is this a family affair? Well, not quite, unless your idea of a wholesome time is to spend the night with Chris Barnes, former mouthpiece for gross-out kings…
Some things don’t lend themselves to snap judgments. From the start, it’s obvious that Mobile’s main focus isn’t easy accessibility. Expect to be challenged whether you know Kotche as the drummer from Wilco, Loose Fur, or Fred-Lonberg Holm. Thanks to the album’s meandering ambiguity, it’s virtually impossible to form a…
South Florida has long been a hub of pirate-radio activity. Thanks to mercilously flat terrain, miles and miles of nondescript subdivisions and warehouses, and a large Caribbean population used to getting its news on-air, Broward and Dade counties are home to as many as 20 illegal stations at any given…
It’s not easy for a band to induce quiet, reflective, or somber moods without lapsing into murky languor, but that’s precisely what the Six Parts Seven does with its instrumental post-rock. Like its previous work, the Kent, Ohio, septet’s 2004 album, Everywhere and Right Here (Suicide Squeeze), maintains a gentle…
How do you follow up an album that opened with the sound of a surgical saw cutting into someone’s chest cavity? You make cartoon music, of course! No matter how hard it might try, though, Fantomas just isn’t wired for levity, which means that Mike Patton and his hyperabrasive supergroup…
Even with a seven-year hiatus, a modern-rock-leaning new album, and the absence of John Stanier’s signature drum style working against them, Helmet deserves better than the otherwise generic heaviness of the Winterfresh Sno-Core Tour. Though much is said about founding member and principal songwriter Page Hamilton’s influence on nü-metal, his…
Throughout the packaging for Wilco’s latest album, the title is listed so that it reads Wilco ≤ A Ghost Is Born. The equation suggests that the album itself takes precedence over the band. Fitting, because as it has continually made clear through its music, Wilco is a vehicle for its…
You may think you don’t like ska. In fact, you may be 100 percent certain of it, but that’s no reason to dismiss the Toasters. Yes, the band has been ska’s undisputed American flagship act for upward of 20 years, but that doesn’t mean much to the nonaficionado who isn’t…
Like his contemporary Carlos Santana, folk singer/acoustic guitarist Richie Havens sometimes says flowery things about heightened consciousness and spirituality that veer toward New Age parody, as if the limits of lovey-dovey idealism and the realities of bad drugs never sank in after Woodstock. But as American history repeats itself in…
Ben Kweller doesn’t resort to irony the way that Steven Malkmus and Rivers Cuomo — both of whom Kweller is compared to — do in their respective bands. Kweller’s photographs in music magazines, and his somewhat tongue-in-cheek album cover imagery (which he oversees himself) may suggest self-conscious geek chic, but…
So, until we meet again, remember: Don’t take yourselves too seriously. Leave that to the all-important Billy Corgan.” That declaration comes courtesy of the Aquabats’ “Bat Commander” Christian Jacobs via the band’s website — which Jacobs apparently hasn’t visited in a while. “I don’t remember who wrote that,” he says,…
Chances are you had a parent or teacher force you to read something at one point in your youth and you thought the book really sucked. You hated having to slog through it and carried around resentment for years. You’d snap “I hate Shakespeare” or something like that, until by…
If you remember the original cover of Exodus¹ seminal 1985 thrash classic Bonded by Blood, then this little bit of speculative trivia is for you. The artwork depicts a demonic pair of Siamese twins joined at the back. The twin on the left has curly black hair and olive skin…
Bad Acid Trip Bands like the American Analog Set and even former bombast-and-fury enthusiasts Einstürzende Neubaten are proving that, in the face of media-driven overstimulation, truly daring has become synonymous with quiet and restraint. Not so for California’s Bad Acid Trip. The band is on tour with GWAR, so you’d…
Do you positively lose your juice when “Cosmic Thing” comes on the jukebox in your neighborhood dive bar? Do you throw your hands in the air for the “tiiiiin roof… rusted!” break in “Love Shack” like you just won the lottery? Is “Rock Lobster” a staple on your “Kick Ass…
To boldy go… where no man ever really wants to unless he’s trying to get out of trouble or into your pants. That’s where Air Supply leaders Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock have staked out their creative territory for nearly 30 years. Call them anything you want — softies, saccharine…
In 1947, American bop luminary Dizzy Gillespie and his big band performed with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo as a featured guest. Though rightfully cited as a significant pivot point in the evolution of the form known today as “Latin jazz,” this moment is one of many in which jazz and…
The great rock ¹n¹ roll swindle continues! Music-journalist sheep still hold to their claim that we¹re in the middle of a rock ¹n¹ roll revival. Nonsense. Rock ¹n¹ roll would first have to go away in order to be revived, and anyone can tell you that (since 1955) rock ¹n¹…
We don’t rehearse,” deadpans Black 47 leader Larry Kirwan. A rowdy bar band if there ever was one, Black 47 is an audaciously vibrant, politically charged, gurgling hodge podge of Celtic and American folk, country, swing jazz, reggae, and hip-hop. As Kirwan suggests, the band likes its edges rough, even…
Mastodon drummer Bränn Dailor, it seems, might be pulling my leg. “You know that [Iron Maiden singer] Bruce Dickinson flies an airplane for Iceland Air? We were flying over there, and I was like, ‘How cool would it be if we heard Bruce Dickinson come over the speakers?!’ That’s wild,…
It’s a real misrepresentation of what we’re all about here on this planet — at least I think,” says Sterling LeBlanc, Ph.D., assistant director of NASA’s Art Program. He’s referring to the music of singer/songwriter Christopher Cross. An unlikely source of controversy to say the least, this marks the second…
