When greased-up SoCal punks Social Distortion release Sex, Love and Rock ‘n’ Roll on Tuesday, it will be the first time they’ve issued a studio album in eight years. But from the sound of Sex, it could’ve just as easily been 18 or 80; that’s how close frontman Mike Ness…
The Cramps are the John Waters of rock n’ roll. Just like the eccentric director, the veteran band proves unequivocally that trash and glamour can be sinfully synonymous. Equal parts grubby sexuality, campy menace and balls-out (or breasts-out, to be fair) American rock, The Cramps are the reason the term…
While many have praised Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy for his effortless (if tortured) genius, the recent discovery of his personal legal pad reveals a calculating artist bent on destroying the critical community from within. This private Tweedy despises the journalists who adore him, so much so that he wants to tear…
When Olivia Newton-John’s Sandra Dee traded her frilly collars and poodle skirts for screw-me stilettos in the final scene of 1978’s Grease, it marked two important cultural shifts: It set the bar entirely too high for women in hot pants; also, it marked the trajectory of every major female pop…
The press release went out midweek and scattered like cigarette ashes so that by late Friday afternoon everyone had heard the news. They wandered into the bar depressed and beaten, wondering what to do, what came next. “Where you gonna work, Jade?” someone called out to the bartender. She shrugged…
The unjustly neglected titan of Accessible Pop has returned for a second round of family creation with his notoriously volatile brother. New Zealands beloved Neil and Tim Finn first tried being a duo on 1995s Finn, producing two singles, with the rest of the album quickly forgotten by all but…
It was nearly 10 years ago that Funland drummer Will Johnson first recorded under the moniker The Centro-matic Band, named as such because he played all the instruments on the songs. Centro-matic has since expanded into a four-piece and even seen a side project, but two years ago Johnson dropped…
With help from producer Dave Sardy, The Thrills trade in some of the Laurel Canyon loveliness of their debut, last year’s So Much for the City, for the swagger of Sunset Boulevard. Which is just about as good a place as any to wonder “Whatever Happened to Corey Haim?” The…
“Heat of the Moment,” Asia’s original stab at melding stodgy progressive rock with pop, was Yes for those who couldn’t stomach 11 minutes of Jon Anderson’s sub-Buddhist mishmash. It was John Wetton, who at least had Robert Fripp to vouch for him, and Steve Howe satisfying all the guitar wankers…
The gear area of the Double Wide’s show room had an unusual inventory Friday night. In addition to the usual drums, guitars and Fender amps, there were the lights: six of the silver clip-on variety (three for Dynah, the opening quartet from Austin, and three for Black Tie Dynasty, the…
The bootleg bins have long been bereft of Clash product. The band existed till it just didn’t anymore and left behind scant evidence that it made any kind of revolution rock outside its handful of studio recordings. Rumors abounded of extracurricular material–the story most often told was about an entire…
Back before My Morning Jacket was gracing network beer commercials, the band put out a second album, At Dusk, that was a dreamier take on the Neil Young/Dinosaur Jr. shenanigans it’s built a nice young career on. It included a second disc of spare demos that stripped the bourbon off…
Allow me to present a new drinking game for your consideration: Acquire one CD by the Canadian power-pop band Sloan. (It doesn’t matter which one, though I’d suggest 1998’s Navy Blues if your goal is to get drunk as quickly as possible. To go a little slower, try the new…
The passing of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo-Kuti in 1997 sparked a wave of renewed interest in the sound, as Fela’s politically motivated Nigerian funk movement began to work its way into the sample-based worlds of hip-hop and house music. New York-based multi-instrumentalist Martín Perna decided to take it a step…
Regardless of Ireland’s vibrant traditional music and culture, on these shores anything Irish is often used as an excuse for frat boys to spill beer on someone, drool and then vomit on their own shoes. Flogging Molly, a scrappy Los Angeles band indebted to the Pogues, is about as authentic…
Tonight, at the Dreamworld Music Complex in Arlington, a dedicated subculture of inked-up, metal-in-your-face teenagers has one mission and one mission only: to bring you the love of Christ via the most ear-crunching, face-rocking, throat-scorching hardcore tunes this side of Hades. He who hath ears, let him hear: Jesus is…
It all seems so clear now. Ninety years ago, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, tripping off the guns of August and World War I. Doesn’t that shit just make you want to dance? Well, it made Glaswegian art students Alex, Paul, Robert and Nicolas want to dance. Rather, it made…
Back when I taught high school, passing period was the most volatile time–the time when girls who seemed perfectly lovely in my English class ended up on the ground with their fists in someone’s hair, screaming about who poked whom with a loose-leaf binder. This actually happened once. It’s so…
Whether you consider her a peddler of precious, pretentious twaddle or an endless font of pure Icelandic genius, you have to give Björk credit for eschewing the safe option. No other platinum-selling diva has had the guts to forge such idiosyncratic paths as this charismatic singer has done over the…
The Beta Band broke up last month? Really? I could’ve sworn they were reborn as a better band, Menomena, whose debut album, I Am the Fun Blame Monster (self-released in 2003 but now being distributed nationally), is the kind of no-genre genius that would fit just as well in a…
The long-awaited third EP in piano man Ben Folds’ mini-album trilogy–available only online at www.attackedbyplastic.com or by download–is a polarizing disc. Those unable to stomach his ivory-tickled smirk and ’70s rock impersonations will find Super D a painful listen. The somber introspection of “Kalamazoo” contains such lines as “How many…
Unlike Nashville or Brooklyn, Dallas doesn’t have a distinctive musical style. Breakout bands from the 214 are a mishmash of genres with little in common besides an area code. If the city were to have a trademark sound, however, it might be something like the Sparrows, who built their rep…
