In the mid-1980s, Dwight Yoakum emerged and reminded us that the Bakersfield sound was the driving subgenre of country personified by Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. 2006 has Texan Sunny Sweeney to remind us of the gusto of Lone Star honky tonk. In less enlightened times, smug city folk would’ve…
It’s November. I don’t even know what I’ll be doing on New Year’s Eve, let alone next March. A lot can happen in the next four months. A band can form, record an album, play a few shows, and break up within that time span. Hell, if I could have…
Forrest Kline, vocalist and guitarist for power-punk stooges Hellogoodbye, might be dying. But probably not. He couldn’t come to the phone the other day — something about being sick — and he doesn’t sound much improved today. “Oh, [I’m a] little bit [better],” he says, still unable to pinpoint what’s…
The band wears ghoulish masks and uniforms, has an eight-man lineup, and plays a metal mashup that incorporates elements of hip-hop, industrial, and hardcore. Sounds a lot like Slipknot. But people who write Mushroomhead off as a Slipknot rip-off probably haven’t heard about the time Mushroomhead (formed in ’93) almost…
Gerard Way offers his critics plenty to ridicule on the latest MCR CD, including unbridled theatricality, more classic-rock nods than even Lenny Kravitz, and the sort of show-biz shamelessness that hipsters consider terminally uncool. Yet the garish over-the-topness of the entire twisted enterprise is precisely why this disc is so…
The 12 tunes on Oy Vey! Ole! are joyous junctures; it’s a place where Afro-Cuban rhythms, traditional klezmer/Hebraic melodies, pop immediacy and economy, and jazz-enriched élan coalesce into convergences of cool. Ninety-something pianist Irving Fields wrote songs performed by Dinah Shore, Xavier Cugat, and Sarah Vaughan and had a hit…
While purists continue splitting hairs over what makes “true” heavy metal style, Danava combs the genre into a weave of fantastic art-rock wizardry that leaves the stick-straight by the wayside. For its full-length debut, Kemado Records’ dark horse moves between kohl-cloaked glam and by-the-misty-bog Zeppelin hallucination fantasies. Gargantuan stoner rhythms…
We considered running for this review a roll call of every genre and reference point that Feathers touches upon in this five-song EP. But then we realized we simply don’t have the space. Yes, this is merely an album of music. But it distills so many far-flung and arcane touchstones…
I was freezing my ass off, standing in front of the stage at the overly air-conditioned Hard Rock Live. But it was OK: The Dictators version of “California Sun” was blaring over the P.A. while a line of Halloween-costumed go-go dancers shook and shimmied their stuff before a giant, carnival-styled…
New Found Glory founding member Chad Gilbert has never seen Elizabethtown. He’s not alone, of course. Plenty of folks have chosen to skip what may very well be the worst of all Cameron Crowe-directed movies. But Gilbert has another reason. “I don’t plan on it because it touches too close…
The members of New York-based band Scissor Sisters admit they were feeling the pressures of a “sophomore slump” when they headed into the studio to begin recording Ta-Dah, the follow-up to the Sisters’ critically acclaimed 2004 self-titled album. One of the things that made that first record so outstanding was…
No one’s more British than Damon Gough, which may explain why he hasn’t broken through in the States. If his brilliant score for the Hugh Grant film About a Boy failed to entrance Yanks in sizable numbers, the Springsteen nod contained in his new CD’s title probably won’t reverse the…
It’s tough to encapsulate the sounds of a city into one medium, let alone an 11-track disc. However, through the mixture of Colombian cumbia, Cuban rhythms, Caribbean steel drums, good ol’-fashioned rhymes, and melodic vocals, Suenalo Sound System smacks any wannabe jam band right in the grill with its multicultural…
The music on Januar’s latest can be hazy, indistinct, and difficult to pin down — and that’s generally a good thing. Rather than present their material in straightforward ways, the performers create a series of aural moods in which mystery and merit are joined at the hip. The Januar lineup…
Puttin’ the Breaks On It was like the Bronx circa 1982. A pair of graffiti artists were busy doing up a wall outside the nightclub. Meanwhile, a couple of b-boys were inside trading moves on the dance floor. A DJ held it down with beats older than half the audience…
When West Palm Beach’s Dumb Struck formed 11 months ago, the idea, according to vocalist Corey “Fox” Logan, was to be an Iron and Wine-style acoustic act. At the time, the only other band member was guitarist Chip Sengelaub. But things changed. The lineup grew, as did the songwriting. Now…
“I honestly never thought they were going to be big,” admits David “Cornbread” Brown, host of a weekly St. Louis radio show. “Then I went to that last show that they did as Big Blue Monkey, and it was freaking amazing. The place was absolutely packed, the kids were so…
Best-known for incredibly catchy punk songs about murder and monsters, Misfits-Samhain mastermind Glenn Danzig is the only alumnus from hardcore’s old-school scene to land an album at number one on Billboard’s classical album chart, with 1993’s Black Aria. More sophisticated and eclectic, Black Aria II is without lyrics, but the…
When the Dwarves signed to Sub Pop Records for 1989’s Blood Guts & Pussy, the Chicago-born/California-bred group burst on the West Coast underground like a runaway orgy. Equal parts garage, grunge, and gore, the Dwarves quickly proved that Blood Guts & Pussy was more than an album title — it…
Along with B.B. King, George “Buddy” Guy is perhaps the quintessential modern blues singer/guitarist. Born in 1936, Guy came from the original wave of Chicago blues players that made a major impact on rock ‘n’ roll, establishing himself with Howlin’ Wolf, Koko Taylor, and Muddy Waters before going solo —…
It takes a true virtuoso to make a handful of chord changes sound like a complex musical arrangement. In the Album Leaf’s case, it is layers of piano, organ, strings, and gently galloping beats. Jimmy LaValle (Tristeza, the Locust, Black Heart Procession) has been playing music since he was 4…
It was Friday the 13th, and things couldn’t have gotten any weirder at this music-store-hosted concert. The headlining band began its set on the empty floor, in a place normally occupied by CD racks. The drummer was the lucky one — he didn’t have to stand in the melted chocolate…
