Dear Snowbird/Tourist/Recent Immigrant: Welcome to South Florida! This music column is dedicated to you, the flocks of intrepid travelers who packed up the Lexusi or booked overpriced flights so you might sample our region’s famously sunny disposition. Let’s face it — this is the place everyone wants to be right…
Born in Germany to a Chinese-German father and a Hungarian mother, Ottmar Liebert began his love affair with the guitar at age 11. By the time he was 18, he was educated into the many ethnicities of music, and he began traveling as a musician throughout Europe and Asia before…
The man may have one of the unfunkiest names in showbiz, but Brian Stoltz is actually one hell of a ripping dude. Check the Crescent City six-string slinger’s CV and you’ll find him backing some of the most iconic performers of the past 30 years: the Neville Brothers, Bob Dylan,…
Along with billions of barrels of black gold and the occasional successful stab at beauty pageants, Venezuela has a rather vibrant music scene that has flown under the radar for far too long. At the modern forefront, slowly gaining momentum and venturing into the mainstream, are Los Amigos Invisibles —…
“I do not want to explain, and I’m not going to/I wanna get high on something/Go dancing with someone/Turn our backs to the battle/I didn’t see anything/Nothing worth remembering.” — Castanets, “Dancing with Someone (The Privilege of Everything)” Ray Raposa is not afraid of abstractions. “Those are the terms I…
Tina Turner might not think we need another hero, but Saves the Day frontman Chris Conley believes otherwise. When Dreamworks Records closed its doors a few years ago, the power-poppers were cast into the street just a year after 2003’s In Reverie was released. Even though these New Jersey natives…
One of the most original bands to gain a bankable following is beginning to sound a little too comfortable in its own self-invented genre. Not that any other band has duplicated the formula: metalcore mosh with auctioneer-gone-mad vocals, followed by incantational harmonies and exotic-stringed acoustic breaks. And few other bands…
In the early ’90s, the Orb’s “Little Fluffy Clouds” took cheeky vocal samples and mushroomed them into something stranger and spacier. While rhythmically rooted in house music, Alex Paterson and crew dosed it with stoned dub and U.K. prog, even goofing on Pink Floyd album covers. This dizzying mixture of…
As the world turns away from melody and harmony to fully embrace post-hip-hop rhythmocentricism, jazz hasn’t kept up, losing relevance like a hemophiliac rolling in broken glass. Drummer Steve Reid has returned to stop the bleeding, and he’s brought producer Kieren Hebden (of bedroom electronica outfit Fourtet) with him. Reid…
Anyone confused by 2003’s worldwide Darkness phenomenon — How does a band this goofy compete with U2 on the charts? — shall remain so. The Darkness has nothing up its spandex sleeve but exuberant hard rock and satire. Still, One Way Ticket to Hell… and Back does differ from the…
There’s generally more than a hint of pretension linked to artists who choose to be known by a single moniker. Madonna, Prince, Nelly, Ludacris — Liberace? Could be there’s more invested in branding than in craft with some folks. So why should we believe that someone who refers to herself…
It’s a question on everybody’s mind: When will orchestral indie rock and atmospheric drum and bass finally get it on? Even though it’s an unlikely union, Brothers Past somehow woo both styles enough to create an undeniable spark between them. The Philly four-piece has been lurking in the underground for…
The ornate, “home life meets night life” opulence of South Beach’s Mansion has seen its fair share of DJ-led debauchery in the past two years. Now, after lending its multileveled space for parties hosted by everyone from Jay-Z to Vanity Fair, the Washington Avenue megaclub is unlocking the velvet rope…
There were several signs that Q-tipping wasn’t enough: I could no longer hear the difference between Coldplay’s mushy whine and U2’s throaty self-satisfaction. I couldn’t hear the drunken hippie standing mouth-to-ear inside the Poor House yelling last week’s RatDog set list at me. I couldn’t hear Mike Jones bark about…
India.Arie made it clear with her 2001 hit, “Video:” “I am not the average girl from your video.” Far from it: the 29-year-old songstress is a Grammy winner and one of the reigning queens of neo-soul, sprinkling the classic sound of Motown with a twist of modern hip-hop. Living in…
When music historians/collector geeks (these are my people) chat about colossal production styles of the 1960s, they always mention Phil Spector and his Wall of Sound. But Teddy Randazzo has yet to get his props — aside from being a singer and songwriter himself, he produced the classic ’60s sides…
Since its introduction in the 1930s by Willie and Troman Eason into the Pentecostal Church’s musical worship, the steel guitar has quietly become a triumphant instrument for praising the Lord. Sacred Steel, the genre of music born out of the African-American Holiness-Pentecostal Church, takes up the original “Hawaiian” steel guitar…
Somewhere between the char-broiled metal of Ozzfest and the souffléd skate-punk of the Warped Tour lies the Buzz Bake Sale — where a baker’s dozen is 17 and the main food groups are grunge and metal. But while most of its ingredients are derived from those two overdone genres, there…
While the average American’s knowledge of Swedish music starts and ends with ABBA, Stockholm’s Adam Olenius boasts a childhood that — musicwise, at least — could have been plucked from any stateside suburb. As a teenager, the first album he bought was George Michael’s Faith. He grew up listening to…
It stands to reason that once you’ve made it to all-star status, you’re one of the legends of the game. Just ask Luther Dickinson, lead guitarist and singer for the blues-rocking trio North Mississippi Allstars. “Actually,” he says, “the name is kind of tongue-in-cheek, because we got two white guys…
With Confessions on a Dance Floor, Madonna makes progress in returning to form after the preachy, pale American Life, but this seamless, beat-filled ode to dance clubs isn’t enough to restore her pop relevance. These are the sounds of 1998, halfway between the Chemical Brothers and Stardust, and on “Sorry,”…
How strange — in a musical climate that gives a new Neil Diamond CD all the promotion in the world, the newly released soul-throwback I Believe to My Soul is already collecting dust. Maybe it’s just that this music doesn’t yell, “Look at me, I’m important!” but these 13 grooveful…
