Music

Unique among celebrities who have achieved some measure of their fame through a sex tape, Motley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee doesn’t come across as a total idiot when he speaks. You’d think he would know that there are better ways to merchandise his reality show, Tommy Lee Goes to College,…

Artist-salute discs make plenty of sense from a business standpoint, since they let labels milk material that was paid for long ago. Problem is, they’re almost always lame — and this homage to Freddie Mercury and friends certainly doesn’t buck the trend. There are lots of ways to go wrong…

While Mick Jagger, notorious connoisseur of the fairer species, may have traded his brown sugar for a spoonful of reality with a Bush-bashing ditty called “Sweet Neo Con,” rest assured that today’s younger rock stars are still loving the ladies. Take the upstart San Diegans of Louis XIV: “Finding Out…

For his fourth solo effort, Daniel Lanois abandons songs about Québecois tobacco farmers and dealings with devils and returns to his first love: evocative, atmospheric instrumentals. A self-described “Canadian kid included in Eno’s Great Ambient Music Chapter,” he recalls his roots, which, of course, include producing U2 and Peter Gabriel…

Caribbean music styles have received much fanfare on mainstream radio of late, and female artists are once again getting the attention they deserve. Back in the ’90s, singer/DJs like Tonya Stephens, Sasha, Miss Thing, and Lady Saw frequently played supporting roles for Elephant Man, Sean Paul, Beenie Man, and the…

Open-mindedness is the key to Seattle-based Boom Bap Project’s success. On Reprogram, DJ Scene and rappers Destro and Karim take a well-worn underground sound and polish it into something fresh. Standard anticonformity and societal rejection themes also abound, but when done with a gentle touch and a souled-out, sung hook…

In the five years since MP4: Days Since a Lost Time Accident, Michael Penn has kept busy producing albums for Liz Phair and wife Aimee Mann and scoring a movie or two. He’s also apparently imagined the decade before his birth, as the setting of his awkwardly titled new album…

Aye, matey. Ye olde accouterments of seafaring days gone by — mermaids, sea captains, galleons, and the like — have become the aural calling cards of the eccentric Portland, Oregon, band called the Decemberists. There is the whiff of days of yore about them, ’tis true, especially on the recently…

People know the Town of Davie for its two main attractions: the Bergeron Rodeo Grounds and the Round-Up, a country bar with the best line dancing in the hemisphere. The local McDonalds drive-through has a hitching post out front; the 7-Eleven is done up with an old-fashioned, frontier town façade…

Rock is dead. Long live rock! What fad are we on now? 2003 opened the door to the garage-rock revival revival. New new wave crashed onto our shores last year. Ask bomb-blastic NYC psych rock trio the Secret Machines and they might tell you we’ve hit reset and are back…

Kid Gavilán, the Sundance Kid, and now: Kid Kadian. Born out of defunct underground IDM consortium the Reverse Side in 2001, the 22-year-old Miamian blends computer savvy, a punk-rock upbringing, and his Jamaican heritage to generate a self-described “anti-pop” offshoot of techno. Like pugilist Gavilán’s bolo punch and his namesake’s…

Experimental pop is a dicey label. At first take, the two words seem an oxymoron. But consider the Arcade Fire and the Mars Volta: Each is in its own way described dead-on by the term, which is vague enough to avoid reductionism but still evocative of the razor’s-edge tap dance…

With its hungover vocals, hallucinatory echo effects, and saucy attitude, Weird War may seem like just another retro band. In truth, it’s a group of playwrights. Each track on Illuminated sets up a neat little world, complete with characters, a plot line, and a set built from evocative musical cues…

One of the great wonders of the Internet is that it can be a fantastic tool for separating fact from fiction. Fact: Outre Mer is the latest album from the progressive jazz-funk trio-plus-one Garage a Trois. Fiction: The film on which this soundtrack is based exists. Known for their wicked…

Pelican has pounded out instrumental epics for a few years now — power-drone rock orchestrations built out of bottom-heavy riffage, downtuned vibrations, and good ol’ feedback. Instrumental rock is rarely done right, though, and even when it is, it’s wholly dependent on repetition, repetition, repetition. The Fire in Our Throats…