Music

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…

The power of association cannot be denied. Whether Mikey likes it or not, the prevalence of tabloid headlines and news reports about his allegedly scandalous behavior makes it impossible to assess this four-CD boxed set objectively. After all, nearly every song invites a double reading — not only “Bad” and…

On Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, 19 of the most brutal speedcore, Satanic-metal, and thrash songs ever recorded are compiled, drained of all life, and transformed into uninspired filler by Napalm Death. The grindcore progenitors took time off from their usual relentless assault to pay tribute once again to some…

The concept behind Below the Radio is that you — the independent music consumer and/or poseur — admire Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle so much, you’re willing to pawn your bowling shoes for a K-Tel collection of his favorite songs. Hyped as a “mix tape,” the compilation includes Lytle-picked tracks from up-and-comers…

Twenty-three-year-old Devendra Banhart’s been busy lately. His third and most recent album, Niño Rojo, is the companion to last spring’s sublime Rejoicing in the Hands. At once fantastical, intimate, and sparse, Niño Rojo is a logical outgrowth of the soft-spoken troubadour’s sensitive palette. Clocking in at just over three-quarters of…

There’s nothing wrong with being a singles act, but that doesn’t stop performers like Fabolous from trying to show they can do more than make radio fodder. For proof, check out Real Talk, which places a couple of first-rate hits alongside some ill-conceived misses. Although the opening track, a spoken-word…

It didn’t take long for the vultures to strike. Less than 48 hours after Jesus died in a New York recording studio — 48 hours before his 36th year in the world began — eBay had more than 100 listings for “Rest in Peace” commemorative T-shirts, caps, and hoodies being…

I wouldn’t consider us a throwback, but I also wouldn’t say we’re reinventing the wheel of rock ‘n’ roll,” says Ronnie Vannucci, drummer for the Killers. “We’re taking the best parts of the music we were influenced by, putting them in our songs, and making them our own.” The Killers…

Visitors logging on to Kraftwerk’s website are greeted by Unicode green text announcing the band’s name and a line drawing of a frequency-emitting radio tower, à la the old RKO Studios logo. Another click generates a menu of some of Kraftwerk’s best-known works, including “Boing Boom Tschak” and “Radioactivity,” which…

Before AFI hit punk pay dirt in 2003 with Sing the Sorrow, the quartet built a bloodthirsty following on Dexter Holland’s Nitro Records. AFI documents the band’s pre-Rolling Stone years with a balanced selection of 15 of the band’s best early tracks. For long-time fans, there’s little to get frothy…

Beware the prestige project, a creative endeavor in which entertainment values come freighted with “artistic importance.” Such is the lineage of Parade of the Athletes, an album of material that Dutch DJ Tijs Verwest, a.k.a. Tiësto, created for the opening ceremonies of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. Although the…

Take a trenchantly independent band, throw a major-label budget and a big-name producer on top — and the result is usually total crap. But Le Tigre has been dodging expectations since its inception, and This Island, the group’s third full-length, maintains its steady arc toward dance-pop immortality. With the help…

Sitting here at the chilling dawn of George W. Bush’s reelection, the politicized whining of a tortured rock star rings pretty impotent and depressing. And yet, on the fateful date of November 2, A Perfect Circle frontman Maynard James Keenan saw fit to shit out Emotive, a self-described “collection of…

Talib Kweli has struggled with finding a way to merge his lyrical gifts with his commercial aspirations. On his latest effort, The Beautiful Struggle, he succeeds with songs like “Ghetto Show” (with Common and Anthony Hamilton), “Black Girl Pain” (with Jean Grae), and the first single, the Kanye West-produced “I…

Let it be known that I do not take the release of a new U2 album — or the public disparaging of same — lightly. Harsh personal experience taught me this lesson. For after writing a few discouraging words about the band’s last record, All That You Can’t Leave Behind,…