Critic's Notebook

Check out Gravy Train!!!!, the Vanishing, and Quintron and Miss Pussycat at 10 p.m. Saturday, July 3, at I/O Lounge, 30 NE 14th St., Miami. Call 305-358-8007.

You may have noticed Ndakhte Ndiaye cruising around in her Honda Element with its “DJEMBE” license plate, dressed in long loose-fitting gowns called boubous from her native Senegal. You may have seen the dozens of long brown braids — interwoven with bright blue and yellow stripes — that tumble down…

So, until we meet again, remember: Don’t take yourselves too seriously. Leave that to the all-important Billy Corgan.” That declaration comes courtesy of the Aquabats’ “Bat Commander” Christian Jacobs via the band’s website — which Jacobs apparently hasn’t visited in a while. “I don’t remember who wrote that,” he says,…

The last year has been good for the mash-up, that DIY form of culture-mulching in which anyone with an Internet connection can download two songs plus the software to splat them together and come up with a trendy dance-floor hit in a matter of minutes. In addition to the scores…

Depending on how you verbalize the ham-fisted title to Polly Harvey’s seventh release, the three grunts can be an endorsement (“Uh huh, hell yeah, it’s her!”) or a dismissal (“Uh huh, whatever, it’s her.”). But Harvey’s catalog has always been about harsh dichotomies. The paradoxical tension between slut lust and…

Wilco Produced by Sonic Youth guitarist Jim O’Rourke, A Ghost Is Born might just draw its name from the mythical status Wilco attained after 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It also finds the band feeding off the negative vibes of the past few years (namely, rehab and the departure of Jay…

Ponytails. They’re the only way to know if men over 40 are “with it.” It’s common knowledge: Ponytails are the nonverbal signal for cool. It’s a fashion-smart way of saying, “I’m lookin’ clean and tidy, but check me on the flipside and I’ll show you what I’m really about.” I’ll…

After incubating in South Bronx parks, the hip-hop virus became airborne sometime in the late ’70s, initially infecting NYC’s uptown clubs with thick grooves of funky breaks and big bass before jumping the confines of the Rotten Apple and metastasizing first in New Jersey, then in Connecticut. The beautifully zealous…

There are tons of great DJ Shadow concert bootlegs floating around out there on disc and vinyl, but the stunning clarity and seamlessly mixed content of the official Live! In Tune and On Time puts all the rest to shame. This 20-track, 78-minute CD (packaged together with a 24-track DVD)…

In the span of a weekend, the old bled into the new. Last Friday’s gig at the Poor House was touted in various e-mails and on websites as the “last Holy Terrors show in a while.” The band’s website (www.theholyterrors.com) declared “check them out for what, quite possibly, could be…

Two DJs methodically hack and mix behind the decks. Whenever the audience and the music reach a boiling point, they mix in a dark, brooding record and let the crowd catch its collective breath. Then, before anyone gets too relaxed, the BPMs build up to another frenzied crescendo. The process…

It’s a bit difficult to get through the shield Nuyorican pop superstar Robi Dräco Rosa uses to protect himself from questions about his public persona. But he lays it all on the line for us. “Who knows? Who cares?” Rosa spits. “Between perception and my reality, there are seven seas…

Of the 7 trillion (and counting) members of the Wu Tang Clan, Method Man has always shown the most promise. From the get-go, the sandpaper-throated roughneck dazzled, with an exuberant flow and one head-spinning turn of phrase after another. His debut solo outing was a stunner, but Meth has never…

Several years ago, U2 singer Bono told Rolling Stone magazine about a visit he and bassist Adam Clayton once made to the home of devout Christians Johnny and June Carter Cash. As they sat down to eat dinner, Bono recalled, “John spoke this beautiful, poetic grace, and we were all…

This oddest entry in the !K7 label’s acclaimed DJ-Kicks series is marred by mediocre mixing and awkward segues; its auteur — Norwegian Erlend Oye — never touches a cross fader or adjusts the pitch control. Instead, the Kings of Convenience singer selects tracks and sings over several of them in…

The sentence “Gary Young is one of the most important musicians working in California today” is unlikely to appear anywhere outside of the former Pavement drummer’s dreams. The Grey Album is demonstrative of why; Young’s El Dorko-dad voice isn’t even karaoke-ready, and the simplistic, tossed-off songs he and guitarist Terry…

The CD arrived in a plain brown wrapper, slipped stealthily onto my desk by an unknown associate. Perhaps, I thought, it would be the answer to the upcoming months of barren sonic landscape in South Florida. And I can reveal, my socks were knocked. What I heard when I dropped…

A few years ago, many people were shocked when Judas Priest lead singer Rob Halford came out of the closet. They shouldn’t have been — after all, Halford had long been roaring onto the stage on a motorcycle looking like the biker in the Village People. But then, you couldn’t…

Near the Earth’s core exists a subterranean conference room, replete with comfy leather chairs, chilled carafes of water, and delicately perfumed air. Recent meetings there have resulted in low-rise jeans, Wal-Mart’s underwriting of NPR, and Jimmy Kimmel. In the corner, Hot Topic founder Orv Madden enjoys a sandwich from Burger…

Face it: Whether you love or loathe the Darkness, the group’s songs are catchy. It’s been scientifically proven that once you hear “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” from Permission to Land, it stays in your head for at least 1.5 hours. The exact notes lead singer Justin Hawkins…

The time has come — now that Spandex pants, high kicks, and leg splits are back in vogue — for dormant local legend Stickshift Lover to emerge from its metallic cocoon and stalk the Earth. This fivesome unloads guitar solos and drum fills like a dump truck dropping a pile…

“We don’t have tattoos on our necks. We don’t write songs about feelings and stuff. And we certainly don’t scream enough. We’re probably going to get eaten alive.” Such were the recollections of Matt Armstrong, the scared-shitless bassist for the Bloomington, Indiana, quintet Murder by Death. That was two years…