Beneath the feathers and glitter and makeup and leather, the Darkness are smart guys. In relaunching popwise hair metal for an age in need of a little heart, they didn’t overlook the miskept form’s secret ingredient: not guitar-god muscle but the lyrical and melodic sweetness that enabled creeps like Bret…
Certain media outlets may try to convince you that the PJ Harvey “of old” is back for the first time. That the gloss of Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea has rubbed off and our favorite indie art rocker/saucy chanteuse is gritty again, with a new “back to…
Slipknot’s latest opens with “Prelude 3.0,” whose dark melody and lulling vocals are almost enough to transform the masked hoodlums into an MTV powerhouse. This charade is quickly killed by an ultra-thrash song, though, and Vol. 3 (The Subliminal Verses) continues in inconsistent fashion by offering up something for everybody…
Cheap Trick is no has-been. At least not live. So it’s disheartening to watch the band act like it’s irretrievably stuck in the past. Japan as the focal point is itself a concession to kitschdom. Yeah, the Far East was first to embrace the band, but there’s more to Cheap…
It’s a summer evening in Detroit in 2003. Iggy Pop stands in the spotlight of the DTE Theatre, only one of thousands that the original rock-and-roll animal has bathed and bled in over the course of his career. A singular sinewy wrecking ball who’s seen it all and done even…
After the first round of Rolling Rock’s Battle of the Bands, the trouble was clear: This month-long competition for $1,000 (finals are June 24) was over, because the best bands had already competed. Who would have guessed? High-quality radio rock at the Hard Rock Cafe? What’s more, not just one…
This brother-sister blues-punk combo might be the most exciting band currently connected to New York’s new rock scene: On Gallowsbird’s Bark, their debut, Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger rough up quick-and-dirty garagisms with brainy science-kid banter, inappropriate sexual tension and the kind of left-field musical accents Jack White probably views as…
That screaming shard of guitar flew from the stage faster than a Coco Cordero heater, and it had decapitation written all over it. It was the final eruption of the Acid Mothers Temple’s sonic supernova that filled Boston’s Axis club at Terrastock 5 in 2002. This large troupe of Japanese…
The Catheters display an impressive disregard for the tidy rules of punctuation on their just-released third album, Howling … It Grows and Grows!!!. (Yep, all those exclamation points are theirs, as is that mysteriously placed ellipsis, which they must’ve picked up in its original package from run-on devotee Fiona Apple.)…
Looking for a weekend concert in Dallas without the usual crowd? You know, the frat boys, the weightlifters and the vacant groupies. You’re looking for a concert where people don’t shove each other around or talk through a band’s set. Normally, we’d laugh and tell you to find that in…
A phenomenon accompanies bluegrass. In the rural American melodies, there exists the relative topics of sorrow, hopefulness, despair and love that appeal to enthusiasts of other genres. The music of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Cold Mountain have a country twang, sure, but they’re also edgy, gritty and daring,…
Though new on the scene, This Damn Town features some old familiar faces: Alex Cuervo and Kari Luna are both veterans of the Gospel Swingers, and Jeremy Diaz played with the Fort Worth-based Dead Sexy. This new grouping finds Cuervo revisiting the broken-down blues turf with his slide guitar and…
Sure, I play guitar, but I play it like a rock critic–which is to say I play about as well as a food critic bakes a soufflé. Still, it’s fun to plug in and turn up the amp to a respectable seven or eight. And I’m not alone. All around…
Good Charlotte is one of the biggest bands in the United States right now, a pop-punk quintet that’s played the MTV Video Music Awards, graced the cover of Rolling Stone and sold more than 3 million copies of its last disc, The Young and the Hopeless. To Good Charlotte vocalist…
This week, we’ve redesigned much of the section. It’s bigger, bolder and–we hope–better. It’s also quite pretty, for which we thank our new art director Steve Satterwhite. The changes are an attempt to give you the most comprehensive music coverage possible. We want to hit this scene at all levels:…
More than 30,000 people will head to Fair Park this weekend for the Crossroads Guitar Festival, giving new meaning to the phrase “jam-fest.” If you’re not interested in fighting crowds and traffic to witness the historic lineup–including Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and B.B. King–there are plenty of other things to…
Most articles about Jay Farrar lead with his history as an alt-country legend. Considering how sleepy his solo work has sounded since leaving Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt, though, the only remnants of his whiskey-fueled Americana are those press references. Until now, anyway, thanks to…Canyon? Yes, this out-of-nowhere alt-country five-piece…
Truth in advertising and then some: Gomez manages to, yeah, split the difference between Blur and Oasis. And, oh, Travis, which isn’t a complaint but a compliment from someone who long dismissed these Brits as wanh-wanh-wankers whose blooze-pop had all the staying power of pot smoke. Bottleneck slide and whiskey-bottle…
Back when I was a fresh clubgoer, not yet legal, it was all about Jawbreaker, Sunny Day Real Estate, All, Jimmy Eat World and a slew of other bands suited to the Vans Warped Tour. Back then, what would be called emo was, as my friend once said, shaving your…
Califone perfoms at Hailey’s on June 9, with Rebecca Gates.
Last week, 65 million votes were cast in one night on American Idol. That’s more than half of the total votes in the 2000 presidential race–granted, that particular election didn’t involve middle-schoolers using speed dial; otherwise Justin Timberlake would be rocking the Oval Office. But when two warbling teens can…
This six-song debut EP is a surprisingly strong collection of smooth pop-jazz, showcasing Lauren Gifford’s sly vocals along with her sure-handed piano playing. Like Norah Jones, Gifford is a lovely young thang with a voice that hearkens back to another era, although Gifford lacks the songwriting sophistication to pull off…
