Idlewild has consistently surpassed its emo contemporaries. On The Remote Part, the group crafts emotional, affecting, vital rock music. Humming with bar-band ferocity (and never self-pitying), Idlewild tops its exceptional 100 Broken Windows by breaking free of the influences that colored earlier albums. U2, R.E.M., the Smiths, the Cure –…
Football, apple pie, baseball caps, and deathly secretive same-sex encounters in the locker room — these things were once “All-American” until some of the boys rejected these rites of flowering manhood. Then they grew their hair long and picked up a guitar. As it turns out, rejection is just as…
On the battlefield, a warrior grapples with despair. He’s certain his cause is just. A rival family has stolen his family’s kingdom, but the price he must pay to regain it is too high. Many of his friends and relatives fight on the side of his rival, and killing his…
Eye pressed to a digital video camera, Chris Blackwell pans the view from the wood hut on stilts overlooking an inlet in the Caribbean that he calls his main office. A long table surrounded by batik-upholstered chairs and littered with DVDs, books, and CDs dominates the sun-filled room, where on…
The Postal Service should consider itself the lead candidate as the official band of long-distance relationships. Death Cab for Cutie’s Benjamin Gibbard (from Seattle) and Dntel’s Jimmy Tamborello (from L.A.) met when their bands were touring and remained in touch, sending each other piecemeal musical parcels like ‘tweens caught up…
Dickey Betts is not supposed to be here. The man’s life went completely sideways early in 2001, when he was fired from the legendary long-running Allman Brothers Band, a group he cofounded. Moreover, Betts wrote most of the songs familiar to Allmans fans today — “Ramblin’ Man,” “Jessica,” “Revival,” and…
Ducks paddle around the fountain in the middle of the man-made pond in the middle of the gated community in the middle of Glen Eagles Golf and Country Club in the middle of Delray Beach’s opulent Villages of Oriole. While Jewish grandmothers slowly drive the streets searching for the best…
An early-’90s classic, Primal Scream’s gorgeous acid-house/hippie-rock remix album Screamadelica revealed that rockers and ravers could hang at the same party. A few years later, such a revelation would come to influence countless acts, especially the Chemical Brothers and Prodigy, and even the record’s specific moments were seminal — without…
For years, Chicago-born MC Common (a.k.a. Lonnie Lynn) has been a standard-bearer for the Native Tongues’ progressive style of hip-hop. During this time, he’s been rightly celebrated for his intelligent lyrics and his rejection of hip-hop’s rampant misogyny (³I’ll never call you my bitch or even my boo,² he promised…
Since its debut in 1992, the Birmingham, England, collective Pram has made music that’s so deceptively simple, it sounds like it was written on a toy piano — by tykes on huge doses of Ritalin. On the surface, the band’s sixth full-length, Dark Island, is of a piece with the…
What I know about tango can be jotted on a napkin: Astor Piazzolla is the genre’s Duke Ellington. It first appeared in mid-19th-century Argentina. And I feel indifferent toward it. (Still, Last Tango in Paris is one of the best films ever.) This admission made, Tango Lorca’s Mujer Sola has…
In 1989, Ani DiFranco released her self-titled debut album. Her photo showed a shaved head with brows and eyes arched like question marks on a young face, seeking an answer to youth’s eternal question: Who will I become? There was heat from the friction of taped fingers rubbing off their…
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult has tried to sell its soul to the devil only once, in 1994, when the Chicago band made a cameo appearance alongside Brandon Lee in The Crow. Two of its songs even showed up on the soundtrack. For a moment, the horror/camp mavens…
When the media decided to adopt electro music as its new “next big thing,” it caused a rift in the small community that had supported machine music for years. Many were appalled at the media’s coverage of so-called “electroclash” (named after a series of club nights hosted by New York’s…
Virginia-based Mae has packed together a background in hardcore, a love for Bruce Hornsby, and a wild-eyed aesthetic theory to produce some of the most bombastic rock ever to come out on an indie label. Singer/guitarist Dave Gimenez cracks a boisterous guffaw when it’s suggested Mae’s luscious debut, Destination: Beautiful,…
104.1-FM the Boss (actually, those call letters are the legal property of a Boston, Massachusetts FM outlet, not to the illegal signal originating somewhere in North Miami-Dade County) fell silent last week. That means no more Michael the Black Man ranting about how Democrats — or Dixiecrats, or Bob Norman…
The most capable vocalist of her generation, Marianne Nowottny has a technique that can only be described by such words as “otherworldly” or “luminous.” Accompanying herself on a variety of keyboards, and maintaining a cherubically aloof presence, she is known as the mystical moon goddess of the post-everything avant-garde. Illusions…
For a few years now, a handful of musicians have been trying to translate DNA codes as directly as possible into electronic music. Letting biology sing is an interesting concept, but the results so far have been a little placid. On his third album, Chopped Zombie Fungus, Otto Von Schirach…
Adrian Sherwood’s pioneering work with bands like Tackhead was a major influence in the rise of the industrial and Bristol trip-hop sounds of the ’90s. His early use of sampling and ambient noise with projects such as Dub Syndicate and African Head Charge established the basis for the dubby dance…
Multi-instrumentalist Xian Hawkins played with electronic-rock pioneers Silver Apples when they reunited in the mid-’90s. Although that looks good on a résumé, the reformation didn’t produce much worthwhile music, save 1998’s Decatur. But since that brush with faded legend Simeon, Hawkins has had a prolific solo career, most notably 2000’s…
The long arm of the law has never much cared for raves, so it’s no surprise that Electric Skychurch founder James Lumb was turned down for recent jury duty. “I didn’t have to go much further than say ‘I’m a rave musician’ before they said, ‘You’re out of here,'” recounts…
After 12 years in the business peppered with who knows how many number one singles, reggae icon Buju Banton is still frustrated. Fondly known as “the Gargamel,” a name given to him by his Jamaican brethren, he does not believe he has achieved the re- cognition he deserves. “The way…
