By now, Gary Lightbody is probably bloody well sick of the c word. Despite the success of Snow Patrol’s latest album, the gorgeous Final Straw, the Irish front man of the buzz-heavy group can’t avoid the Coldplay comparisons. You’d think no one else knew how to craft intricate make-out music…
Ah, Hanson. Were we ever so young? Fondly remembered for their supremely catchy and overplayed hit “MMMBop,” the brothers Hanson exploded onto the airwaves in the late ’90s before exploding into puberty. Their most recent album, Underneath, shows how much the boys have matured since the “MMMBop” days. A couple…
Bay Area noisemaker Kid 606 (Miguel Depedro) would like to think he’s killed sound. After all, his last two albums were called Who Still Kill Sound? and Kill Sound Before It Kills You. But just to mess with our heads, he creates albums full of sounds, overflowing with sounds. He…
Who needs drugs? Martyr AD’s April release from Victory Records, On Earth as It Is in Hell, is much cheaper for gripping your brain in a vise and giving it a good, heady scrambling. “This is the sound of three years of discontent and corrosion of life and society around…
It might trip people out to discover that some lucky individuals have an uncanny ability to see sound. Whereas the rest of us must ingest massive amounts of acid to Technicolor our world, these people are born with a gene that produces kaleidoscopic visuals 24 hours a day. Synesthesia, as…
Sure, Churchill’s on a Saturday may seem creepy, but tonight the scary stuff’s not in the bathroom; it’s on stage. The club’s horrorbilly night is a little bit country, a little bit macabre. Imagine Rory Calhoun as Farmer Vincent in the ’80s redneck slasher Motel Hell, add the hip swivel…
What’s the 411 with downtown Hollywood gettin’ off the chain lately? Why, I remember when you could walk down Hollywood Boulevard and grab a soda pop, perhaps purchase a romance novel and a gelato. Now, you’ve got the hip-hoppers and the dance kids all over the place, with their bass…
This California quintet hasn’t released an album since 2002’s What It Is to Burn, but that doesn’t mean the band has been sitting on its ass. Last summer, Finch skipped the festival circuit — including a prominent invitation from Warped — to continue touring on the strength of Burn’s ongoing…
Electronica is alive and well in the F.L.A., having survived the demise of Squeeze and the unfortunate revival of college alt-rock in the guise of 20-somethings doing their best Eddie Vedder impression while bitching about their girlfriends. Thank Tomita there’s Ultrastar*, a trio of tech-heads that loves nothing more than…
Every Boston album cover, beginning with the band’s self-titled 1976 debut, features a funky spaceship. The image — usually a gigantic psychedelic saucer topped with a glass dome — passed down to 1978’s Don’t Look Back, 1986’s Third Stage, 1994’s Walk On, the Greatest Hits album in 1997, and even…
In support of recent reissues of their first three records, the Psychedelic Furs have embarked on a U.S. tour, effectively preempting any chance of a surprise episode of Bands Reunited. I’m sure we all wanted to see the cameras sneak up on Richard Butler as he mowed his lawn in…
Ludwig Clarke, aka Luddy, is a local DJ/singer who laces his dancehall and reggae jams with stream-of-consciousness-style raps about revelry, chicks, and hardships, echoing the Grammy-winning Sean Paul and the multiplatinum-selling Shaggy. Considering he was born in 1982, that’s pretty impressive. The Jamaican-born artist now resides in South Florida, but…
With a concert festival named Projekt Revolution, there is an implied guarantee that madness will ensue at said event. Why? Only the truly mad would switch out the letter c for the letter k in the word Project. Consider it the illegitimate child who was conceived when Lollapalooza, Warped Tour,…
The CD cover for Georgia blues rock quintet Delta Moon is truly weird. A bearded man wearing only overalls and a grin stands in a field of flowers holding a guitar. Behind him are two green, glowing aliens and a perfectly Photoshopped UFO in a menacing sky. It made it…
Every Thursday night in July, the Factory, that bastion of all things spandex and neon, hosted a Rock en Español showcase. Now it’s decided to continue it. Not quite sure what the REE-volution is all about? Take some metal, punk, or good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll, then add some Latin…
Do you own wind chimes? Do you have an obscene amount of candles in your house? You might be a Bebel Gilberto fan. But that’s not to say the Brazilian chanteuse is just for folks who read all of Oprah’s book-club selections. Hell, no. Gilberto is, in a word, smooth…
The CoolJunkie DJ Spin Off is like American Idol for DJs. Check their steez at Crobar all month long, as new DJs throw down mixes for your vodka-and-tonic-drinkin’ ass in hopes of being the next big thing. You might get to see the next Paul VanOakenDyk or something. Think of…
Break out your videotape of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (the one you stole from Q Records in 1989), because according to Grand Buffet’s website, the American rap duo is going to be doing a lot of smashing this year; in the South, in Canada, and in their “second favorite country,”…
Soca music hasn’t had a lot of luck finding its way to the rarefied realm of MTV’s Total Request Live, but Jamaican-born singer Kevin Lyttle’s jam “Turn Me On” just cracked the top ten, beating out Jessica Simpson’s stomach-churning single “Angels.” The dance-ready single from his self-titled debut album features…
Attention, air drummers! Your favorite prog-rock power trio (no, not Triumph) is headed your way. That’s right, the band that made naked man-ass a staple of 1970s album art has embarked on a merry quest to promote its latest record, Vapor Trails. This tour (complete with a scary dragon logo…
Winston Rodney, raised in St. Ann’s, Jamaica, was guided into that country’s burgeoning music scene by the town’s most famous son. In 1969, Robert Nesta Marley arranged a meeting between Rodney and Coxsone Dodd, head of heralded reggae label Studio One. Dodd liked what he heard and booked studio time…
Every Tuesday night for the past month, Churchill’s, that kettle of ever-boiling testosterone, has been taken over by women — and not half-naked mud wrestlers. Twenty-three-year-old Laura Sutnick and friends Lauren Reskin and Suzy Herzfeld initially put together a night at the Miami club to watch the Showtime series The…
