Despite solid songwriting, burning fretwork, deep grooves, and an earnestly dark outlook, Warren Haynes and company can’t seem to achieve liftoff on Voodoo, the group’s first studio release since the loss of bassist Allen Woody. The retooled four-piece, which puts on intriguing live performances, serves up a mostly lackluster collection…
According to Mr. Webster, the word sellout means “one who has betrayed one’s principles or an espoused cause.” That’s an interesting idea when pondering how loosely this term is used to condemn bands who refuse to do what’s expected. Black Tape is nothing like the Explosion’s previous work. True, it…
There’s nothing more annoying to a music geek than an ad exec who’s ahead of the curve. How many indie rockers cringe when they see that McDonald’s commercial that financed the Shins’ last tour or hear Isaac Brock’s tortured bark in the background of an ad for minivans? Metric shills…
San Diego hardcore boys gone sensitive, Pinback has been a well-kept secret for years. Duo Rob Crow and Zach Smith originally did time in bands Thingy and Three Mile Pilot (two of whose members went on to found Black Heart Procession) before taking on Pinback full-time in 1999. After a…
Beat Street Good Karma It’s about time Fort Lauderdale embraced some of the beat-driven culture for which Miami is heralded. Thanks to the residents of Karma Lounge, dance music’s been revived in an area usually blessed (more accurately, cursed) with commercial trance and 99 JAMZ hip-hop. DJ Sean Weeks, a…
As Respectable Street Café celebrates 17 years of existence this month, those of you who were there in the beginning are probably feeling the strains of adulthood and are grateful for the club’s forgiving darkness. One positive thing about age is developing an ear for good music, and Friday you’ll…
Cuba is best-known for its beautiful beaches, extravagant cigars, and bearded despots. It also happens to be the birthplace of the finest trumpeter in the world. Although Arturo Sandoval hasn’t called Cuba home in nearly 15 years, he’s done his heritage proud, winning four Grammys and six Billboard awards. Whether…
After 78 years, no damned hurricane — or even four of them — is gonna put the kibosh on Opa-locka’s Arabian Nights Festival. Originally scheduled for mid-September, the long-running shindig was postponed due to the unrelenting storm season but has emerged invigorated and expanded. It’ll be studded with celebrities from…
Two outs, bottom of the ninth, and our team is getting its ass thoroughly pounded in what has been a disappointing season for South Florida music festivals. It’s 11 months into the year, and there hasn’t been a single, all-encompassing rock ‘n’ roll fiesta — something that caters equally to…
For a guy who takes the Christian Right to task on his new album and refers to Dubya as “Monkey Boy” on his website, Travis Morrison doesn’t seem terribly dismayed by last month’s election results. “I’m fine,” he insists, speaking by phone from the bluest of states, New York. Fine?…
There’s a lot of work cut out for anyone just copping to MF Doom after catching him bend space and time on that damn-near-relevant new De La Soul album. Between pseudonymous releases (Viktor Vaughan, King Geedorah) and his collabs (Mad Lib, MF Grimm), Doom has dropped four records in 2004…
In the 18 months captured in this seven-disc set, Miles Davis is between milestones. His astonishing early ’60s sextet (which gave us, among other things, the seminal Kind of Blue) is no more, and he is searching for what will eventually become his groundbreaking mid-’60s quintet. The collection encompasses an…
After a five-year hiatus, Handsome Boy Modeling School is back open for enrollment. With its second installment, superproducers Dan “The Automator” Nakamura and Prince Paul push the concept album envelope further. A smattering of old-school legends (reggae crooner Barrington Levy, surrealist diva Julee Cruise, John Oates — yes, that John…
Thanks to Beyoncé Knowles’ transparent ambitions, Destiny’s Child has been on a deathwatch since day one. And after Beyoncé’s solo breakthrough last year, pragmatic observers may wonder how her R&B trio has survived. But the real surprise of Destiny Fulfilled is its content, not its mere existence. Rather than the…
Pop music’s prolonged existence is due in no small part to constant homogenization. Mining underground movements for the sound of now has been its protocol since day one, leaving little for elitists to drool over. Somehow, Norwegian artist Anne Lilia Berge-Strand — Annie to you and me — found a…
After toiling virtually underground for a decade, Magnetic Fields finally won mainstream acclaim via 1999’s three-volume 69 Love Songs — plus enough good press to wallpaper the Louvre. Of course, 2004’s belated follow-up, i, could never equal that achievement, but singer/songwriter Stephin Merritt has retained his gift for penning impeccably…
Betcha holiday time at the Burbridge home is a helluva party. Older brother Kofi is the virtuoso flautist and keyboardist for the Derek Trucks Band, and the younger Oteil plays bass with that legendary rock ‘n’ roll fraternity known as the Allman Brothers Band. I imagine copious whiskey, lots of…
Despite her stage name, blues bombshell Candye Kane hasn’t led a life of peppermints and puppy dogs. Working her way out of East L.A. as a sex professional, she appeared on the cover of magazines like Juggs and Floppers during the ’80s and fell in with Hollywood’s hard-living punkabilly scene…
Travis Morrison, who brings his indie-funk dance party to Respectable Street Café on Friday, December 3, answers the question: What albums are you looking forward to? “I have a good feeling about the next Decemberists’ record, and I can’t wait for another Justin Timberlake. I really hope he breaks things…
While trance and jungle trace their origins back to Europe, breakbeat is exclusively ours. Taking cues from hip-hop and electro, the chunky beats and arpeggiated melodies of breakbeat have drawn equal fanaticism from b-boys and club kids. We fortunate Floridians can boast one of the genre’s greatest champions, Orlando’s DJ…
Named after the act of two lesbians sitting with legs interlocked, rubbing their genitals together, New York’s Scissor Sisters are exactly what the post-election “red states” fear most about the bicoastal “blue states.” After all, as keyboardist/bassist/group epicenter Scott “Babydaddy” Hoffman remarks, “It would only take a little white to…
Jared Cole presides over Ray’s Downtown Blues bar with Hugh Hefner-like authority. He sips straight Jim Beam from a highball glass; a cigarette dangles from his hand. His smile is three times the size of his head, not because he’s surrounded by half-naked Bunnies — unless you count the girl…
