The marvelously twisted Mael brothers, known in pop circles as Sparks for the past 30 years or so, are living proof of the adage that if you stick around long enough, eventually you’ll be back in style. Sparks began life as a slightly more than standard power-pop band, with Russell…
It’s a Sunday afternoon on Fort Lauderdale beach, where a brief thundershower and an onshore breeze have temporarily tempered the muggy scorch of August. On the patio of the beachfront Atlantis nightclub, bare-chested men and barely dressed women sip beer and frozen drinks to the strains of reggae classics like…
764-HERO, while still at peace in the relative obscurity of the underground, is no longer the sort of new phenomenon that can be judged one release at a time. After two full-length albums (Salt Sinks, Sugar Floats and Get Here and Stay), an EP (We’re Solids) and a brilliantly conceived…
Back in April, the Poor House hosted a pair of fine hip-hop-influenced acts from our sultry neck of the woods, giving this observer the impression that some pretty good local music was lurking around. However, the two bands — the Square Egg and Hashbrown — have done an admirable job…
Oh God, it’s a world beat record from two aging rock drummers who really ought to know better than to attempt something like this. Charlie Watts, long-time drummer for the Rolling Stones and American Civil War artifact collector, has never made it a secret that he loves jazz much more…
Robert Belfour What’s Wrong With You (Fat Possum) The scope and depth of North Mississippi blues are amply documented on the latest releases by the Oxford-based Fat Possum label, the highly touted indie responsible for breaking the likes of R.L. Burnside and the late Junior Kimbrough, among others. T-Model Ford’s…
“Someone, somewhere said something about tragedy being an opportunity,” insists Ulysses Perez, drummer for Miami trio A Kite Is a Victim. It’s not that the band’s downbeat, melancholy songs take listeners down a suicidal spiral or that its members lead particularly dismal lives. But the group actually thrives on living…
Of great interest to Bandwidth, of course, is a new band from Fort Lauderdale, the Getaway Plan. More accurately, the band’s bassist and guitarist live in Coral Springs, and the drummer is holed up in Delray Beach, while singer Dominic Traverzo makes his home in Hollywood. “I just say we’re…
The new album being marketed disingenuously under the moniker of Icelandic trip-hop darlings GusGus is not a collaboration among the collective’s nine members. The seven tracks of GusGus vs. T-World were actually laid down in the mid-’90s by DJ Herb Legowitz and programmer Biggi Veira, who were known as T-World…
Don’t expect the sons of Kyuss — an underappreciated band that drew comparisons to Nirvana in the early ’90s — to rise up lethargically like Lon Chaney Jr. and embarrass their ancestry. Sure, guitarist Josh Homme packs bowl after bowl of blooze-metal variations from the seedier side — admittedly equal…
In his half-dozen previous records, John Wesley Harding has compiled one of the strangest and most beguiling oeuvres in modern rock. He’s capable of writing blistering love songs, blistering songs of protest, even offering a campy cover of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” The Confessions of St. Ace is full of…
In 1994, back when the Sub Pop imprint still meant something, Sunny Day Real Estate released a remarkably dull album titled Diary. That’s not quite the oxymoron it seems. All the components of a great album were there — a talent for lurching guitar-driven songcraft, a cycle of detailed and…
In truly inspiring do-it-yourself fashion, Mr. Quintron, “The Amazing Spellcaster,” has created a mini entertainment empire based in New Orleans’ tough Ninth Ward. His music: Four albums of organ/ theremin/contraption sound, from noise to go-go R&B. Think Korla Pandit in a junkyard, eyes to outer space. His club: the Spellcaster…
If you went and saw The Klumps when it opened and missed the Spitkicker Tour, you helped Eddie Murphy pad his bulging pockets while making it even harder for nonmainstream acts to make the trek to our area. On Thursday, July 27, the hip-hop festival visited the Sunrise Musical Theatre,…
Depending upon how you count, Rock ‘N’ Roll Singer is the second or third solo outing by Mark Kozelek, the songwriting arm of Red House Painters. Although RHP’s Ocean Beach (1995) and Songs For a Blue Guitar (1996) were dominated by him (the latter completely, in fact), this is the…
The kids grow up so fast these days. Back in 1967, those nice Beatle boys had taken five years and about a dozen albums to reach the stage of enlightenment and evolution where they could confidently create their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It’s taken Courtney Taylor the same…
John Fogerty wrote “Born on the Bayou,” but the title hits a lot closer to home for Marcia Ball. The blues pianist grew up in the Gulf Coast region that bleeds between Louisiana and Texas; the same fertile crescent that spawned Janis Joplin, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, and George Jones. Ball…
The personality of a postmodern pop group is not so much split as it is severed. There are tons of musical styles from which to pick and choose, so all that a clever and imaginative musician needs to do is to figure out how to piece them all together with…
Last week’s column detailed the ongoing noise problems associated with West Palm Beach’s weekend fun destination, Clematis Street. This week Mayor Joel Daves, who lives just blocks from the street’s busiest section, details his hands-on involvement in the continuing decibel debate. For the past 20 years, Daves has kept a…
Few of us can, as the locution goes, “relate to” German mezzo-soprano Ute Lemper. Assuming you’re not some highbrow international singer/dancer/model/actress who can hit up admiring acquaintances like Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, and Nick Cave for new material, you may rightly regard Lemper as a glamorous weirdo, a hyperactive superachiever…
The title track of this nifty debut platter is a nearly perfect love song: heartfelt enough to sell you on the yearning but catchy enough to transcend the dead zone of schmaltz. Credit Salett’s knack as an arranger. He knows that the best way to showcase the song’s plangency is…
What if a miracle happened and rap suddenly replaced stupid self-aggrandizement with progressive politics of inclusion and unity? Give praise, for that has finally happened. The party line touted by L.A.’s Jurassic 5 is free of the standard hip-hop trappings of violence, status, jewelry, bad taste, and champagne. In fact…
