Every now and then, James Balyut has second thoughts about the name he’s chosen for his band. “It’s a publicist’s nightmare,” he worries, for when people see +/- written down, they might not get it. They might mistake it for battery terminals. Complicating matters further, Balyut says, is the fact…
For more than a decade now, hip-hop has struggled to reconcile its “hustla” and activist sides. During much of that time, the music has fostered a simmering ideological tension between outlaw “me first”-ism and communitarian selflessness. Like KRS-One and Rakim before him, West Philadelphia rhymer Baby Blak effortlessly balances street…
One is barely able to suppress nausea when taking in the expansive package that is Sleep with You, the new album from Miami’s ever-blustery Ed Hale and Transcendence. The costly and glossy gatefold sleeve is as lavishly appointed as a Carl’s showroom and every bit as tasteful. “I can give…
If you’ve read something in these pages about an upcoming event at the new Club Venu in downtown Fort Lauderdale, and, intrigued, decided to hoof it down there and check out a show… we apologize. God forbid you listened to us and took the plunge. Some fans grew suspicious not…
In 2001, the unreleased album cover to the Coup’s Party Music became a symbol of the post-9/11 balancing of civil liberties and patriotism. Two years later, Sonic Jihad, the fifth album by Paris, the San Francisco Bay Area’s own “Black Panther of Rap,” rekindles that controversy with a cover depicting…
Skull Ring is Iggy Pop’s best record in a while, which is kind of like saying the McDonald’s drive-through went a little quicker today. It’s generally assumed that Iggy’s solo records bear two or three good tunes and that his main contribution is proof that Dionysian figures exist. It’s pointless…
Labeling an artist a “fluffy light-rock Muzakhead” is the kiss of death for musical credibility, conjuring nightmarish visions of Air Supply and other somnolent saps. But there’s no denying that the music of Brits Dido and Travis doesn’t exactly ooze testosterone. Dido’s breezy “Thank You,” sampled by Eminem for “Stan,”…
Pink is riding one of the steepest evolutionary curves in all of pop music. As good as it was, her 2000 debut, Can’t Take Me Home, didn’t point to Try This — not at all. On her third album, Pink has left behind tear-stained diary entries and unleashed a hard-rocking,…
As a late Wednesday night becomes an early Thursday morning, Angelo Pillitteri — a lean, long-haired, leather-clad man known for the past 22 years as “Flash” — takes the stage with his mates in F, the band named after him. Save for a few lines on his face, Flash could…
During the late 1970s, synthesizers were making major inroads in contemporary music but weren’t able to penetrate the suburbs where I grew up. Jimmy Page and Ritchie Blackmore were gods. John Foxx, a chisel-jawed singer with an English accent copied from David Bowie and Bryan Ferry, was an unwelcome interloper…
The woman behind the counter was chipper, eager to help, and utterly clueless when Bandwidth requested Echo and the Bunnymen at the Plantation Barnes & Noble recently. In fact, the look of confusion she shot us indicated that our request was by far the weirdest thing she’d heard all day…
Achtung, baby: I’m one of those soulless cranks who likes Liz Phair’s new record. Metamorphosis, the debut album by teen-TV queen Hilary Duff (not counting last year’s Christmas disc or the zippy soundtrack to this spring’s zippier The Lizzie McGuire Movie), is probably the Exile Phair would’ve made if she’d…
Headgear is mighty important in this business. Which is what gives this upcoming double shot — a pair of area shows featuring Chicago blues legend Eddy “The Chief” Clearwater and that crazy quartet of surf avengers who call themselves Los Straitjackets — such drawing power. The 68-year-young Clearwater rarely appears…
After recent, overindulgent, and sometimes-uninspired offerings from the experimental ilk, there seemed to be a stagnant air in this genre. Then again, one should never say never, and with Atlanta native Richard Devine’s latest offering, the sonic blueprint has once again been revamped, transmitting some of the most jaw-dropping cerebral…
Television emerged from the same NYC punk-rock milieu as Blondie and the Ramones. But those bands often disregarded (or clearly fought against) technical proficiency. Television was (gasp!) a musically accomplished band that played with a lean and mean edge but featured (gasp!) actual guitar solos, then anathema to the punk…
OK, the hipsters in the reading public invariably know the Junior Senior shtick: one short, one tall; one straight, one gay; one skinny, one fat; one walrus-y, one indie good-looking (as opposed to model good-looking). They write slightly tinny, slightly wet Casio-disco-rock anthems about said topics. Every song is like…
Inspired by the likes of the Chemical Brothers, British promoter/producer Barry Ashworth got into the act himself, becoming a big-beat DJ in the mid-’90s. His Dub Pistols collective debuted in 1996, blending techno-rock, hip-hop, and reggae in a fresh potent stew. The full-length Point Blank appeared in 1998, and the…
It’s hard to imagine the development of skating without punk or other more aggressive forms of pop music, because it’s always inspired the athletes,” says Alan Deremo, musical director of “Tony Hawk’s Boom Boom Huckjam.” “There is a rhythmic aspect to punk that is very much conducive to skating and…
Belle & Sebastian have left the ’60s. On Dear Catastrophe Waitress — which should’ve been called Following Catastrophic Failure, i.e., last year’s awful soundtrack to Storytelling — the Scottish group mostly abandons ’60s orchestral folk for… ’70s orchestral pop. So instead of hearing hints of the Beatles, Leonard Cohen, and…
A Dane whose shrill voice is piercing enough to shatter thy cup of hallowed blood, King Diamond is one of the more recognizable (and bizarre) faces on the death-metal circuit. He’s influenced a new crop of middle-aged Halloween metalheads who are tired of doing the Gene Simmons or Alice Cooper…
It’s not easy getting into Jay-Z’s recording home at Bassline Studios, tucked away on West 26th Street in Manhattan. I have to sneak in behind a woman walking into the building, take an elevator to the eighth floor, then knock on a pair of glass doors before a security guard…
It’s tempting to unconditionally dismiss Jamie “King” Colton as a leather-clad freakazoid. Maybe it’s the cover art for the Pompano Beach guitarist’s Strange Twist album (apparently rendered via Baby’s First Photoshop!) that dooms it before a note is struck. This one-man (plus a Flying V and a leather cowboy hat)…
