“Try, try, try,” Billy Corgan moaned shortly before his Smashing Pumpkins turned to mush. If history is any indication, he was most likely imploring the Little Mermaid’s dad to turn him into a dolphin, but he might well have been talking to his future self: “Billy, when the Pumpkins break…
Cleveland’s Vacancies are yet another group that’s walking the ledge of genuine unpredictability in a day and age of cut-and-serve pretentiousness. For this reason, their decidedly unpretentious howl comes off like the gospel — even if it’s the gospel you’ve heard 8 million times before. As their name denotes, their…
When talking roots, it’s hard to get farther down the musical tree than Africa. So when searching for rootsy compositions evocative of deep blue seas, rural villages where chickens cluck about the streets, and a soulful spirituality far removed from the media-saturated din of contemporary life, your first stop should…
If anyone can come up with a name…,” struggles Turbonegro bassist/mastermind Happy Tom, attempting — via cell phone from an Oslo taxicab, no less — to hang a handle on the Norwegian death-punk band’s upcoming excursion to the U.S. Bible belt. Perhaps he’s trying to top last summer’s “Res-Erection” festival…
In the driveway of the Port St. Lucie house Infiniti shares with his fiancée, 19-month-old son, and stepfather sits a ’57 Chrysler Imperial once owned by singer Karen Carpenter. Infiniti’s studio is lined with pillowy fabric columns and acoustic tiles, providing him a dead-neutral sound environment. The preproduction outfit was…
Rock is a genre that made a name for itself by being mouthy. So what would happen if the lead singer — who so often dictates the attitude of a rock band — were suddenly to disappear, leaving the music to convey its message without language, in an egalitarian symphony…
Armed with his slide guitar, trademark microphone/motorcycle helmet, and a kick drum, Tucson’s one-man-band Bob Log III walks the Earth promoting “Boob Scotch” — his gift to the barroom arts. “When you’re having fun, you clap your hands,” Log theorizes. “When you’re having a lot of fun, you clap your…
“I guess if people tell you that you suck, then you just suck,” concludes an uncharacteristically grim Trash, on his way to dropping off a pile of fliers for his next show. Trash — a.k.a. Chris Bright, the perpetually stringy, strung-out, six-stringed screamer who regularly pushes the envelope of good…
As a producer and beatmaker, Muggs gets off on dirty-grimy-sexy. He loves its unmistakable whiffs of grit and cool. While he was producing the early trailblazing work of Cypress Hill, trip-hop and Tricky were exploding across the pond, creating an even more swampy mix of dark tones and moods. On…
Not long ago, the onetime industrial behemoth Ministry was all but written off the books: too cerebral for the attention spans of nu-metal kids and officially uncool for the industrial-goth club crowd. And Ministry didn’t help its cause with the sludgy, directionless mess that was 1999’s Dark Side of the…
Nas runs on two themes: loss and the reclamation of former glory. With God’s Son, the Queens rapper, plagued for years by a lack of focus, makes those themes indistinguishable, finally meeting the challenge of Illmatic, his 1994 masterpiece — and albatross — as he struggled through subsequent mediocrity. The…
Eve has some good shit. She has sass. She has style. She has the crown on her head that says she’s hip-hop’s latest queen. But she also has a problem on her new album. She’s settled so comfortably into the role of pop’s cameo girl that she’s lost some of…
Contrary to popular belief, the Spanish word puto doesn’t mean “fag.” To Molotov, puto is anything that’s bad, wrong. For example, if you accused Molotov of homophobia for its 1997 hit “Puto” (which repeated a puuuuuto-puuuuuto” chorus dozens of times), that automatically qualifies you as a puto — the song…
In an open-air club in the hills above Kingston, the half-dozen members of the Turbo Force sound system huddle behind a sculptural citadel of equipment, sifting through a mountain of 45s. Working two turntables, one of the Turbo Force DJs jaggedly switches selections like the stations on a transistor radio,…
Deep in the distant rock ‘n’ roll past, great and mighty festivals once ruled the Earth. Lollapalooza, Woodstock, H.O.R.D.E., and Lilith roamed the world’s venues, bringing dozens of bands to thousands of fans. But that was a long time ago (in rock ‘n’ roll years, at any rate, where trends…
What do you get when you put together a band whose guitar and bass players either don’t play their instruments or are just learning them? While a lot of noise may seem like the obvious answer, it afforded the members of Rainer Maria an opportunity to follow their own instincts…
The prerelease buzz on Groove Armada’s fourth album was that Tom Findlay and Andy Cato had tossed away their unwilling association with “chill-out,” the laid-back dance genre that spawned a thousand somnolent beats last year. But the truth is more complex: Since forming in 1994, the U.K. duo has consistently…
F**K Without some vestige of a sense of humor (Andrew WK?), riff-roarage alone can’t make party music palatable. But give Fort Lauderdale’s uncomplicated, gloatingly unimaginative F**K — pronounced “Ef-Dual-Star-Kay” — a chance to screech your weasel. There’s certainly something risible about the way F**K takes a jaundiced affection for vintage…
Never regarded as a musical nexus of great import, South Florida has no definitive genre to call its own, save perhaps Miami Bass. But individual records have made an impact, or died trying. Not all make for great listening, but each one helped delineate our crazy combination of cultures –…
“These are the kind of tales told at midnight” goes the intro to The Hoe Tales, a collection of rhymes as filthy as Redman’s apartment. With enough heavy breathing and hot talk to rival the entire Vivid Video catalog, this disc packs the raunch of a Porky’s marathon. Smoother than…
Since everyone could use a little break from orange-level terror alerts and talk of looming nuclear and biological fallout, the timing couldn’t be better for a fresh dose of dub narcotic. Enter Nutone’s latest, Sunset Nights: A Collection of Deep Jazzy Beats. The compilation of acid-jazz (or nu jazz, jazzy…
On the ’90s show My So-Called Life, Jared Leto courted Claire Danes via acoustic guitar. Leto has enjoyed heartthrob status ever since, appearing in small movies and Tiger Beat centerfolds. What My So-Called Life never revealed — before being canceled because Claire was too big for the small screen –…
