If you’ve already heard the Inside, you know that it doesn’t take a recipe of matching black mop-tops and Vespa scooters to create a great mod band. It takes a handful of the Kinks, a dollop of the Move, a sprinkling of the Stooges, and a pinch of the Hives…
Skampida makes ska’s syncopated bounce and saucy Afro-Latin rhythms the foundation for heavily politicized lyrics. The inflammatory nonet hails from Colombia, a country plagued by social problems and government corruption (not dissimilar to the good ol’ red, white, and blue) and has been using Miami as an outpost for the…
It’s Saturday night, and Jimmy Cavallo is doing what he’s done nearly every weekend for the past decade. The 78-year-old singer and sax man is playing to a full house at Doogie’s, a jazz supper club in Deerfield Beach. Between Sinatra standards, Louis Prima hits, and big-band-era favorites, the Pompano…
“The whole message of our music is ‘be a better person,'” Ronan Harris says. “Do good things and make the world a better place, without necessarily associating with that cheesy, granola, Birkenstock-wearing shit.” It’s a surprising slice of optimism from a man who’s aligned with the cold pulse of industrial…
A recent New York Times article disputes the age-old idea that depression inspires creativity. Author and psychiatrist Peter D. Kramer claims that it’s “depression — and not resistance to it or recovery from it — that diminishes the self.” And without self, of course, one can’t create. Devoted acolytes of…
While understated and ethereal in the vein of the Cowboy Junkies or an acoustic Mazzy Star, the songs on Over the Rhine’s latest release, Drunkard’s Prayer, also pulse with a raw tension that comes not from theatrics or volume but patient, dramatic buildup. The Cincinnati duo of Karin Bergquist and…
With a soaring choral intro that erupted abruptly into erratic sprays of knuckle-blistering guitar, British Sea Power’s debut, The Decline of British Sea Power, was anything but predictable. But Open Season, the English group’s anticipated follow-up, is exactly what you’d expect from a sophomore effort: a tamer, meeker, more manicured…
The last time New York’s high-concept electroclash outfit Fischerspooner tried to go pop, it didn’t have much in the way of songs to make an impact on people not impressed by synth squelch alone. So the duo came up with a stage show heavy on spectacle, lampooning the costumes, lighting,…
Potential can be a bitch. Proclaiming that a group “has potential” is a backhanded compliment at best, implying it may be decent or even great in the future — but only in the future. For the past few years, Zion I has been heralded (or dismissed) as tomorrow’s bride, the…
Post-modernism loves a ripe, juicy contradiction. Words like bittersweet and achingly tender sum up the beautiful tragedy of millennial existence, the quest to make meaning out of mystery. They also describe the wistful, faded glory that the National’s third full-length lowers on the listener. There’s an almost palpable autumnal sensation…
There’s a new piano man in town, and like Billy Joel, New Jersey transplant and Hollywood resident Brendan O’Hara is a hopeful romantic. The singer-songwriter’s band, which includes a boy guru who narrates poetically between songs, is called the Humble Ones; their newly released Perceptive Inception, a 20-song disc of…
In the late ’70s and early ’80s, the only thing the punk/new wave set and the mainstream rock crowd had in common was a disdain for the improvisational flights of the Grateful Dead. Flash-forward to recent years, when long hair and immersion in roots music has become common in indie-rock…
The gentlemen in Sunday Driver, though I’ve never personally met them, are mountain men. Oh yes — they’ve cohabitated in a mountainous terrain, 45 minutes from any semblance of civilization. While recording their debut album, A Letter to Branson City, the dudes set up shop in a cabin on top…
As college students of the ’90s graduated and joined the working world, the Lilith Fair phenomenon subsided and LF-associated artists like Paula Cole, Toni Childs, and Shawn Colvin were like subjects for “where are they now”-type articles. But we all know the trending quotient doesn’t necessarily correlate with quality. The…
Just when you thought you were out, they pull you back in! Proving the worth of its name, snazzy Las Olas nightspot Karma Lounge is now reinstated in downtown Fort Lauderdale¹s good graces. To help christen the affair, DJs/promoters Geo Lopez and Mike Lazaurdo, along with Mike Bledsoe¹s Uplift AM,…
“Everybody thinks we’re assholes,” Sum 41 guitarist Dave Baksh says. “We’re Canadian; it’s impossible.” Phoning from one of the asshole capitals of Los Angeles, the Bel Age Hotel near Sunset Strip, Baksh and his band are taking a breather from an extended road trip with punk legends Unwritten Law. The…
While it’s tempting to dis actors who multi-task as musicians, sometimes it’s unjustified, as a few actually played instruments before they played roles. In the 1960s, Gary Busey drummed in the band Carp, and Saturday Night Live alum Chevy Chase was keyboardist in the psychedelic-era Chameleon Church. So when Kevin…
“I must’ve been high on crack, high on crack, high on cra-haaack…” So go the lyrics to “The Game You Play,” one of the more hilarious standouts on the upcoming release by Paul Sennello, a.k.a. P-Man, and his band, Rhodes Gibson and His Orchestra. The name’s an exaggerated mouthful, reflective…
The inevitable indie-funk wave has crashed on American shores, and its salty foam’s getting critics all moist and breathless. We Are Little Barrie is a sly, hopelessly hip introduction to the trend: a tightly wound amalgam of Meters-like funk and Donovan-esque Northern soul psychedelics that’s as authentically British as Austin…
Full (and damning) disclosure: This correspondent and Mariah’s publicist were the only two people to publicly claim that the universally reviled Glitter soundtrack was the best thing Carey had ever done. I was the only one who meant it and still insist that that collection of ’80s-inspired froth and naked…
The bicoastal Boston/Berkeley MC Mr. Lif makes the sort of politically charged Bolshevik boom-bap that warms the coffee of both old-school hip-hop fans and MoveOn.org activists. Which — despite what that demographic might indicate — doesn’t mean that Lif can’t get down and party. On Black Dialogue, his new group…
Ya gotta respect Ates Isildak. First off, dude’s got a name that sounds like an Eskimo fertility god. Second, as Echo Me, Astronaut, Isildak has released an album of lucid, almost transparent guitar and voice studies, so quiveringly intimate that you can nearly feel his breath on your ear. It…
