Ten years ago, the Album Leaf’s main man, Jimmy LaValle, was part of San Diego hard-core noise demons the Locust. “I played keyboards,” he says. “And screamed.” He went on to play guitar, drums, and bass in three different seminal indie bands, inching away from bombast toward the peaceful melodicism…
The M3 Summit’s Bridge and Tunnel rump-shaker, presented by arbiters of urban hip Triple 5 Soul, The FADER, and Turntable Lab, features a slew of up-and-comers as well as music’s current “it” girl. SA-RA Creative Partners is a bicoastal trio of producers turned performers. Previously beatmakers for Dr. Dre, Jurassic…
Meet Mason, West Palm Beach post-punk quintet whose soon-to-be-released Just Shake Hands is actually scream-worthy. Skylar Mondell, Jesse Lee, Brandon Shaffer, Brian Burliegh, and Anthony Young are vicious as a five-headed Hydra. But their racket is not without sunny guitars, soothing silences, and idyllic, tender bridges. Mondell’s vertiginous voice is…
In the language of analog recording, wow and flutter were terms used to describe the distortion common to the recording process. The title of The Kills’ second album is obviously ironic, because the duo’s powerful, stripped-down sound is built on a foundation of fuzz, feedback, and distortion. Hotel, a highly…
Once upon a time, the existence of Jennifer Lopez CDs was entirely justified by the photos included with them. Given that she’s now 34 years old and has become one of the most overexposed celebrities to tread the planet’s surface, I figured this would no longer be true — but…
The second in Sonic360’s globe-spanning, electronic-loving Beatwave series, Japan differs from its predecessor in its wildly diverse influences. While the artists collected on Argentina swayed deeply to their country’s traditional tango rhythms and showed a devotion to somber synth-pop, Japan hopscotches with the same kind of dizzying overstimulation that’s on…
Cowabunga, dude: Spring Break has returned to Broward County — Sunrise, to be specific. Thankfully, the latest incarnation is a wee bit more cultured than the decades-ago golden age, replacing the cheap beer, wet T-shirts, and mindless party music with microbrews, hula-hoops, and heady party music. This past weekend’s Langerado…
Lest you forget, Bennigan’s is ostensibly an Irish pub, so it’s fitting that the schlocky chain restaurant should don its tam and go for gold on the most Irish of holidays. Actually, it’s more the dedicated drinkers of the group Kocosante who are responsible for putting together one of Broward’s…
Well, this is interesting. From out of nowhere arrives In Motion, the second album from Lakeland, Florida’s, Copeland. Somehow, unlike so many Central Florida acts, this upstart four-piece actually cobbles together influences that range beyond last year’s MTV pap. Over the course of In Motion’s ten tracks, Copeland moves from…
A long time ago, in the scary makeup hierarchy of rock ‘n’ roll, Kiss begat Marilyn Manson, Madonna begat Taylor Dayne, and GWAR begat Slipknot. While many would argue that it’s all about the music for Slipknot, the band’s local hockey-mask dealer and sheet-metal welder would disagree. Slipknot seems to…
Electro has undergone several deviations since the dawn of Kraftwerk’s cold pulse, from the “Planet Rock” of Afrika Bambaataa to synth-pop to recent electroclash nostalgia. One of its more underrated offshoots is Florida’s indelible electro-breaks scene, which owes an equal debt to roller-skating booty-tech and German industrial beats. At the…
Busdriver belongs to the rapid-firing, über-caffeinated slam-poet school of MCing. While such diarrhetic verbalizing can be numbing, the L.A. artist’s verses prove consistently fascinating, mainly because they’re witty and well-detailed, with a cockeyed surrealism. Much of Fear of a Black Tangent concerns the ridiculousness of the hip-hop milieu — not…
Keyboardist John Medeski is the melodic acrobatic of jazz trio Medeski, Martin, and Wood. Listening to his fingers pirouette across his array of ivoried instruments — piano, Hammond organ, Fender Rhodes, clavinet, melodica, Wurlitzer — is an auditory workout. Medeski can jackhammer his keys with percussive stabs, lean into prolonged…
The catchall term for the stuff is “jam band” music, but that cliché hardly describes the tuneful smorgasbord offered at this weekend’s Langerado Music Festival. For the third straight year, Langerado brings the nation’s top touring bands to Broward County. And once again, the festival has grown: The lineup –…
In that golden time before marketing flaks defined the ‘tween demographic, Tiffany exploded into shopping malls and pop radio with her cover of Tommy James and the Shondells’ 1967 hit “I Think We’re Alone Now.” Only 16 at the time of her ’87 first blush, Tiffany Darwisch was the youngest…
Tori Amos perfected her ability to combine creative risks with emotional introspection on early discs like 1996’s Boys for Pele, which struck a welcome balance between modern flash and old-fashioned sentimentality. But on Amos’ recent experimental albums, listeners felt curiously removed from the flame-haired faerie queen, largely because their characters…
If Outkast’s Andre 3000 made it safe for hardened hip-hop heads to embrace their inner, sexually ambiguous Prince, will Canadian import Buck 65 open the floodgates for cowboy hats and Hank Williams cassettes? Hip-hop may run through his veins and into his rhythm section, but Buck’s clanky acoustics and gruff,…
In 2002, New York’s Interpol and England’s Doves each made a valiant effort at releasing the year’s best homage to Joy Division: Both Turn on the Bright Lights and The Last Broadcast took gloomy doom-rock atmospherics, gray-sky guitars, and deep-baritone emoting as far as possible without actually covering “Love Will…
Ever meet a jazz snob, the fan or musician who maintains the “obvious” superiority of jazz over other genres? Pianist Jason Moran is the polar opposite — an uncompromising jazz musician unashamed to draw inspiration from areas considered sacrilege by purists. He reimagines works of Afrika Bambaataa, Björk, and classical…
A button-down sanctuary for bluehairs and snowbirds, Boca Raton is probably the least rock ‘n’ roll place in South Florida (maybe America). But sometimes you find the sweetest things in the strangest places. Take for instance, Amp Fest ’05, two hot and heavy nights of raucous local rock of all…
Recalling the sly intimacy of Lou Reed and Maureen Tucker during their quieter moments, the duo of Jared Flamm and Kala Savage provides the serene poetry that makes this Biirdie fly. Though Morning’s dreamy, dusty songs are colored by an array of instruments — rich piano, minimal percussion, wavy synths,…
There’s a simple reason why overstimulated, drunkards at rock shows reflexively scream out “Free Bird!” in that pregnant pause before the encore begins: The song might be the most glorious, foot-on-the-amp, mullet-in-the-wind, shred-friendly rock anthem of all time. Its adolescent yearning and simple worldliness (penned as a dedication to Duane…
