When Mark Stuart name-drops the Man in Black twice on the opening track, “1970 Monte Carlo,” it makes the Bastards feel less like outlaws and more like a new-country galoot stressing that he always listens to Hank Williams but never sounds anything like him. But once Stuart’s “1970 Monte Carlo”…
London trio Morcheeba jumped to the forefront of edgy-yet-accessible trip-hop with its full-length Who Can You Trust? in 1996, continuing the formula two years later with the fine Big Calm. Unfortunately, the hope for more muscular, atmospheric music from Morcheeba faded dramatically with 2000’s weak Fragments of Freedom, and the…
Who would possibly care that Leif Garrett, fallen teen idol from the avocado shag carpet days, is staging a comeback? Only those who derive pathological pleasure in picking apart his hapless, hopeless attempt. Here’s the deal: Garrett, who has spent the last half of his 40 years outside the music…
A new Levi’s commercial shows a couple plunging their car into murky water to the tune of Air’s “Playground Love.” Techno duo Orbital makes a cameo appearance in this summer’s action film XXX. Although electronica has penetrated every living room in the nation, the electronica scene doesn’t have much to…
Stephin Merritt has released his second full-length album in collaboration with Christopher Ewen as the Future Bible Heroes, and it’s exactly the sort of electronic pop extravaganza you were expecting. Unless, of course, you were expecting 69 more love songs. In that case, you’ll have to wait. Future Bible Heroes…
It’s always a shame when a recording studio burns to the ground. There’s a lot of expensive stuff in there, after all. And it’s even worse when half the pricey musical doohickeys that are incinerated belong to close friends and colleagues. It’s one thing to call your insurance company and…
Napster’s got x’s for eyes now, and the Recording Industry Association of America is a bunch of idiots. They say file-sharing and CD-burning is killing the music business. They insist that it’s not Limp Bizkit or Muddles of Pud or Linkin Park; that it’s really we music lovers making our…
Maybe the Dixie Chicks dared to undertake this acoustic, bluegrass-flavored album to kill the dumb-blonde image they’ve always teasingly courted and never seriously deserved. Or maybe the astounding success of the tradition-soaked O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack has finally been acknowledged in Nashville’s corporate halls. Or maybe, as their…
If you’re of a certain age, maintain a decent amount of sexual suggestiveness and bratty rebelliousness, and, most importantly, hail from Sweden, then we’ve got some good news: Your band may already be rock’s next big thing! Division of Laura Lee meets all the prerequisites, and although its members missed…
Dave Alvin is rock ‘n’ roll’s true everyman. That role has been ably played in the past by Springsteen and Mellencamp and Hiatt and a host of others whose perspective has been altered by the distance that success ultimately imposed upon their working-class roots. Alvin might be in the Big…
When most people walk into Sidblu bassist Pablo Lopez’s West Palm Beach workplace, they see a corporate office for designing funeral home Websites. But in the top-of-the-line computers, laser printers, and CD-ROM burners, Lopez sees a no-dough promotional palace and compact-disc manufacturer. “Someone has to do it,” Lopez understates. After…
Do the math: Add overwrought Jane’s Addiction dynamics, subtract Dream Theater’s effete metal crunch, and multiply by the dejected lyricism of just about any emo band currently breaking hearts to sum up this Detroit band’s full-length debut. Full of busy time changes and intricate arrangements, Volume Plus Volume offers instrumentation…
The self-titled debut from Fort Lauderdale’s FiveSixSixFive bleeds lo-fi ennui and plenty of couch-potato, casual-Friday aloofness. Half of its 12 tracks sound like quickly tossed-off experiments or attempts to test out new synths, samplers, and drum machines; but the quirky pop songs that constitute the remainder make it among the…
The August 30 local premiere of the British film 24 Hour Party People, which chronicles the rise and fall of Factory Records and Manchester’s brief tenure as the sonic center of the universe, was one of the musical events of the year. In attendance at the Friday-evening event in Sunrise…
Three tracks in, Clipse introduces listeners to where it comes from: “In Virginia, we smirked at the Simpson trial/Yeah, I guess the chase was wild, but what’s the fuss about?/See plenty of my partners feeling like O.J./Beat murder like the shit is OK/That’s what our dough say.” When, say, Ja…
Like a swarm of mosquitoes, a few male singer/songwriters (Dashboard Confessional, Bright Eyes, Pedro the Lion) have been making us itchy of late. Their melodies and lyrics are intimate, introspective, and infectious; they gather press, shout-outs, and fans, goodly amounts of whom are female middle-schoolers. They are talented and dreamy…
The Icelandic band Múm is composed of two beat-programming, synth-jockeying pinup boys and classically trained twin girls who play everything from the glockenspiel to the viola. As evidenced by that other “it” band from Iceland, Sigur Rós, not to mention Björk, there’s got to be something in the water up…
Yeah! The tail-dragger from Greenville, Mississippi!” bellows 80-year-old James “T-Model” Ford in the opening seconds of Bad Man, his fourth album on the blues song-catcher label Fat Possum. Just in case you stumbled onto Bad Man without prior knowledge of his greatness, T-Model continues: “Can’t read or write/Never been to…
Whether it’s casting freak rapper Kool Keith as the demented gynecologist Dr. Octagon or transforming Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Kid Koala, and himself into post apocalyptic anime superheroes in Deltron 3030, Dan “the Automator” Nakamura produces soundtracks for all the kooky comic-strip worlds in his head. That might help explain…
Ordinarily, we would write off Joanna Connor as just another of the myriad female blues singer/songwriter/guitarists who offer blues lite with a touch of country. But Connor’s album The Joanna Connor Band, released independently this year on M.C. Records, shows that she is so much more. Sure, there are several…
Bondage — backed by trendy beats — has abandoned downtown Hollywood. The fetish club night at Club Deco Drive called London Ballroom faltered rather than thrived there. Impresario David Cordoves says he fought a never-ending battle to get the venue to comply with his strict agenda. After a few months,…
At this late date — 15 years since its inception, or a century in hip-hop years — Public Enemy’s only competition is its own past. Chuck D knows this too, and it irks him like nothing else since the Jews took over the media and shut down ex-calypso singer Louis…
