If Alkaline Trio is truly the savior of punk rock, if the band really lives up to its rabid, fan-fueled glorification, you wouldn’t know it from talking to Dan Andriano. The bassist/vocalist sounds rather indifferent speaking over the phone from a tour stop in Boston. Given the hurdles the band…
Ladies and gents, cats and kittens, saints and sinners — get ready for the full custom gospel sounds of the Reverend Horton Heat! For more than 20 years, the good reverend (known as James Heath outside the clergy) has been holding Mass for the masses, shepherding a faithful flock with…
Thanks to rhymers like Pluzwun and Mike West, the 954 is starting to get noticed as a hotbed of hip-hop creativity. As the Fort Liquordale community pulls itself up by its bootstraps and works hard to build a scene, folks might want to take a look north to rope in…
Take heart, all you Pavement worshipers surveying the current reunion landscape: Face the Truth — the third solo album by Stephen Malkmus (with occasional contributions from his backing band, the Jicks) — is his first to truly do justice to the formidable legacy of the band he used to front…
With the Pink Zep comparisons a year behind them now, local ex-pats Secret Machines can get on with the business of revealing their true selves… with songs by Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Berry Gordy Jr.? Seriously? You’d be forgiven for missing the joke, since there isn’t one on this…
After so much give and take, after growing so close to the Great Pumpkin through so many years of intimacy, we all want Billy Corgan’s solo debut to burst like a golden light through the storm clouds of his recent meandering. The Pumpkins didn’t end well. Zwan was divisive. But…
Depending on how you look at it, Guru is either the rare hip-hop icon with the courage to follow his convictions beyond the commercial spotlight or a mainstream hero sliding into indie irrelevance. Version 7.0, the first release on his own label, 7 Grand, suggests the former, though not always…
Betcha holiday time at the Burbridge home is a helluva party. Older brother Kofi is the virtuoso flautist and keyboardist for the Derek Trucks Band, and the younger Oteil plays bass with that legendary rock ‘n’ roll fraternity known as the Allman Brothers Band. I imagine copious whiskey, lots of…
It’s been a couple of months since the IPO of Only Human, the latest album from Fort Lauderdale rockers Crease, so momentum has built to a fever pitch for this week’s official release party. Human is the band’s best effort to date, a swing-for-the-fences, Rock-with-a-capital-R affair. Producer Charles Dye simultaneously…
Don’t be misled by the moniker Hobex — it is not the nom de musique of some laptop-techno-30,000-bpm DJ/electronica type. Rather, Hobex the band both sings and plays instruments to make live music, which, in the dark years before house music, people actually danced to. Formed from the ashes of…
While it isn’t easy toiling in Sasha’s immense shadow, it doesn’t hurt to be allied with the dance icon either. Just ask his Ibiza countryman James Zabiela. After Zabiela’s mixtape was passed from Fabric/Global Underground vet Lee Burridge into Sasha’s able paws, Zabiela signed to the latter’s Excession agency and…
Don’t confuse Austin’s Asylum Street Spankers with that into-the-dustbin-of-history, neo-/retro-swing/lounge trend that thrived in hep urban environs in the 1990s. A great deal of that stuff was shallow and ain’t-we-hip jizz by people who’d never even seen a Count Basie album. These Asylum Streeters are just plain folks — bastard…
With its eponymous debut, hard-rock fourpiece Far From Gone attracts the spotlight that so often favors Broward over Palm Beach County. The eight-song CD starts off with a bang, lining up a trio of powerhouse tracks with a strong sense of melody and group dynamics. Vocalist Jeff Irving is a…
The most impressive thing about Cowboy Troy’s major-label debut is what it took to make a black country-rapper feasible. Hip-hop, the great assimilationist art, had to become the dominant musical form. A long line of experiments, from Charlie Daniels’ spoken-word songs to Timbaland’s hoedowns with Bubba Sparxxx, had to lay…
Ryan Adams couldn’t be more full of himself if he were the corpulent Mr. Creosote, as the Cold Roses packaging makes clear. These 18 songs could fit on a single disc, yet they’ve been spread over two CDs to justify a gatefold design that mimics the classic ’70s double albums…
No gangsta-rap label is more infamous than Death Row: Federal criminal probes, coastal beefs, strong-arm violence, unsolved murders, and shady business practices exemplified Suge Knight’s Los Angeles-based conglomerate, whose artists, known as “inmates,” represented a ’27 Yankees-caliber pool of rap talent, including 2Pac, Snoop Dogg, and Dr. Dre. Now known…
Even with heavy-metal genes, electronically enhanced vocals, and a fashion-punk backing band, Kelly Osbourne couldn’t rock. Her debut disc, Shut Up, filled with powerless ballads and mild outbursts, stocks more bargain bins than Tony Martin-era Black Sabbath. Like Pink, another artist who turned in a stylistically unflattering inaugural release, Osbourne…
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…
As a physician based in South Florida, I can’t tell you how many referrals I’ve written for patients with environmental allergies. But even as the state fights to eradicate melaleuca trees, another nonnative species sends patients to my office faster than a Claritin overdose. It makes poison ivy seem like…
I know we’re all still suffering a sugar hangover from the sensory overload of pop puppets and the hairless corpulent Svengalis manipulating the strings in honor of a dollar. However, New Edition has more in common with the Jackson 5 than with faceless Disney money wranglers. The fact is, when…
“Hey, folks, we just flew in from Libya, and, boy, are our arms tired!” Not that San Francisco rockers the Heavenly States are corny enough to start a show that way, but they certainly could if they wanted. In an unprecedented example of rock ‘n’ roll good will, the four-piece…
Remember the Pheromones, the Bus, dot Fash or Voodoo Death Gods? If you do, chances are you know the Numb Ones. The hometown alt-rockers have been performing for the past six years under a slew of other names before settling on their current moniker two years ago. They’ve also finally…
