Mastodon drummer Bränn Dailor, it seems, might be pulling my leg. “You know that [Iron Maiden singer] Bruce Dickinson flies an airplane for Iceland Air? We were flying over there, and I was like, ‘How cool would it be if we heard Bruce Dickinson come over the speakers?!’ That’s wild,…
Hey, it’s not our fault!” Nebula singer/guitarist Eddie Glass protests over the phone from his California home after it’s pointed out that his band has circled the globe four times in six years yet never set foot in South Florida. “We tried on our first tour, but your whole state…
It must be nice to be the best band in the world. After more than a decade of creating brilliant but ignored albums, the Flaming Lips have cemented their right to that title over the past five years with a trio of releases: first, 1997’s Zaireeka, an experimental LP that…
The common wisdom regarding the Beatles’ final record, Let It Be — which was released in 1970 to a dispirited public and critical response — is that it was tarted up and defiled by evil pop producer Phil Spector, who was called in to remix the album after the band…
Any show that ends with two guitarists (sans pants) screaming at the top of their lungs could spell trouble, but not so in the case of Black Lips. They use a hatred of pants to their advantage. The Atlanta-based foursome kicked Churchill’s in the crotch last summer when it played…
When famed Fort Lauderdale B-movie king Herschell Gordon Lewis teamed up with legendary Cleveland punk rockers the Pink Holes, the task was simple: Take the theme songs from two of Lewis’ best-known flicks and revamp them with modern-day plumbing and electricity. “The South’s Gonna Rise Again,” the redneck battle hymn…
Though the word genius can be as misused as a condom on a Mötley Crüe tour bus, it would be daunting to find a better description for director Chris Cunningham after viewing his masterworks. Another stunning entry in an already brilliant concept, Cunningham’s edition of the Director’s Label Series (which…
Be it a lousy sitcom, an episode of Crossfire, or the audible blow-by-blow of the drunken brawl in the apartment next door, we all love eavesdropping on a good argument. Which probably accounts for our attraction to the indie-rock dueling-vocalist assault — the howling poetry of Rainer Maria, the high-concept…
Based in Baltimore and run by producer Skiz “Spectre” Fernando, Wordsound is one of the strongholds for the electronic/dub/hip-hop crossover that germinated in mid-’80s no-wave New York and has occasionally reared its head through sundry mutant genres like trip-hop and minimal techno. This latest volume by Crooklyn Dub Outernational isn’t…
It’s a real misrepresentation of what we’re all about here on this planet — at least I think,” says Sterling LeBlanc, Ph.D., assistant director of NASA’s Art Program. He’s referring to the music of singer/songwriter Christopher Cross. An unlikely source of controversy to say the least, this marks the second…
In the photo gallery on the Mosquitos’ website, a single picture footnotes the raison d’être for the group’s self-titled debut, a bossa nova/indie-pop love child that’s earning praise from the drinkers of cool drinks and the hipsters with stirring hips. From a bird’s-eye view, we see one Juju Stulbach, a…
Rappers teaming up with other rappers is a fairly common thing, but producers collaborating with other producers is the type of shit that doesn’t happen every day. J-Dilla (Slum Village, A Tribe Called Quest, Common) and Madlib (Quasimoto, Yesterday’s New Quintet, Dudley Perkins) have defined, to some degree, the indie…
Duncan Cameron isn’t going to lie to you. This is all about success. It’s about fame, money, fortune, exposure, selling a superior product, and being recognized for those achievements. The Hashbrown guitarist just wants to acknowledge the crowds that have made the hard-funk band one of South Florida’s favorites. “All…
Slovenia’s finest export has been creating its propulsive music as a sardonic response to the turmoil in its homeland for two decades now. With Laibach’s first release in seven years, the fearless foursome evokes memories of a once-bleak landscape, this time with almost effortless electronic purity. It’s political techno-rock. The…
Over its 25 years, hip-hop has created some durable identities including thug, playa, activist, and straight-up cool cat. But with most rhymers fancying themselves big-ballers in every hater’s gun sights, riding on 20-inch rims with a hottie in the back seat, one crucial role has been scuttled: that of the…
The Talking Heads box set is the ugliest thing you’ll see in a music store — save for the clerks. Housed in a long, awkward rectangle and bearing a painting of odd-looking naked humans in a grotesquely kitsch Edenic landscape, Once in a Lifetime is not only an aesthetic atrocity…
The fact that Big Shots could hold its own against the majority of recent hip-hop albums might be a bad omen. A cynic could argue that, evidently, hip-hop hasn’t evolved a hell of a lot since 1993, the year this duo stopped recording. But Big Shots would have been a…
“Let the eagle soar Like she’s never soared before From rocky coast to golden shore Let the eagle soar” — Words and music by John Ashcroft Few people have seen the clever propaganda memo that the White House recently released in an attempt to stem the tide of youth protest…
Primus frontman Les Claypool seems an odd fit for a jam-band adventure on the high seas. Considered one of the more innovative bass players to emerge during the past decade, Claypool’s warped genius doesn’t blend with the patchouli-wearing, Birkenstock-footed crowd. Or so it would appear. “There’s certain elements of the…
This album deserves to be granted an extended shelf life not just because of its unique qualities but for the travails the band endured to get it out there. The original version, Deep Water Slang, nearly disappeared with the demise of Zion I’s former label, Ground Control/Nu Gruv Alliance. But…
Maypop, the outfit formerly captained by West Palm singer/songwriter Keith Michaud, wore out its welcome after a couple of years. The group¹s comfortable emo respectability left it with little to distinguish itself from the pack of SoFla peers. Michaud¹s new project, Summer Blanket, is much more complex and tougher to…
Stop us if you think you’ve heard this one before: Fefe Dobson, a just-legal Canadian teen, has released a disc full of antidiva rock snarls, junior-prom ballads, and disses to propriety on her self-titled major-label debut. Unlike fellow Canuckette Avril Lavigne, however, Dobson whips out raw riffs and authentic attitude…
