After putting one over on the public, by which I mean the fanatical hundreds who keep up with Damon Albarn’s digital-circle jerks, the Blur front man, Dan Nakamura, Jaime Hewlett and everyone else collecting royalties three albums in for one album’s worth of real, ahem, work return with yet another…
The belatedly released recording of the nine songs laid down at the band’s first studio session, Pixies reveals that as early as ’87, the Pixies had already come up with some of their best tunes. Pixies fans (and if you aren’t one, say a novena and run to the record…
Oasis still rakes in the pounds and can sell out a Scottish sheep pasture before tea, but American kids would rather crank Hoobastank than that whiny British band their older brother used to listen to. Too bad, because Heathen Chemistry is a ripping album–reminiscent of Definitely Maybe and (What’s the…
John Congleton and Matt Armstrong, otherwise known as one half of the pAper chAse, sit in a tiny, cluttered recording studio, otherwise known as one of the rooms in Congleton’s house in a quiet neighborhood in northeast Dallas. The spoils of Congleton’s successful eBay bids are thumbtacked to most of…
He may be a bald, vegan, gospel-loving peacenik, but ask him the wrong question and Moby turns into one combative little dude. Witness: Me: So, new record, new songs, new live show. What can we expect this time out? Moby: Well, when I make the records it’s just me in…
The clever video for “New Slang”–the first single off the Shins’ full-length debut, Oh, Inverted World–has the band’s four members posing in careful re-creations of various classic indie album covers: the Replacements’ Let It Be, Cat Power’s Moon Pix, Slint’s Spiderland and Hüsker Dü’s New Day Rising and Zen Arcade…
A couple of the smartest tunes on Bratmobile’s third full-length, Girls Get Busy, lambaste George Dubya’s war on terrorism and his campaign to sway the public. On “Shop for America,” singer Allison Wolfe proffers the peppy ironic anthem “Kids in America shop for America,” while on “United We Don’t” she…
To be honest, most (OK, fine, all) of what we know about how our city works–or doesn’t, usually–comes from what we hear star columnist Jim Schutze say in staff meetings. Before we started paying attention, and even for a while after, when we heard someone talk about Victory or Palladium,…
The OK trio’s second disc since reimagining itself on 1997’s Zaireeka, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is casually electronic and curiously acoustic, sounds from either end of the musical spectrum crashing in the middle and collapsing into smiling, sad piles of overcast optimism and, as leader Wayne Coyne puts it,…
Every teen-age male I know swears by Led Zep, which makes a certain kind of sense: Theirs was an immortal bombast, a melodic rumble far more riveting than what passes for nü-rawk these days; even loud, especially loud, it never lost its shape, which is far more than you can…
Once a hotbed of quality underground hip-hop, NYC’s Rawkus Records has fallen on hard times, dogged by distribution problems, chronically delayed albums and disgruntled artists. With the chips stacked against it, the once-mighty team hopes to salvage its rep with the third edition in its critically acclaimed Soundbombing series. Per…
To paraphrase LL Cool J, Nas doesn’t want people to call his return a comeback, since he’s been here for years. But hip-hop addicts don’t see things this way and never have. “Every time I make an album, they’re always saying, ‘He’s coming back,'” grumbles the rapper during a telephone…
Lucinda Williams survived the past two decades as the consummate music-industry underdog, a favorite among critics but a nobody with the masses. Her songs, marked by a mind-set of observation, were covered by fellow musicians–most notably Mary Chapin Carpenter’s hit with “Passionate Kisses”–but it seemed Williams never got the kind…
Free All Angels finally hits the United States a full year after its release in the U.K., where it’s been a huge hit. And fortunately, the album’s being released here in summer, because if Free All Angels is anything, it’s a Summer Album. Which is exactly what singer-guitarist Tim Wheeler…
Considering his band’s gradual estrangement from the nü-metal scene it helped take mainstream, you’d think Incubus DJ Chris Kilmore would be less sanguine about the group’s free-floating status these days. After all, the perfunctory DJ scratch is one of the central elements that first distinguished nü-metal from regular old metal,…
“Tar the Roofs,” the opening track off The Singing Hatchet, the Radar Bros.’ 1999 sophomore full-length, is just about as (gloriously) sad and searching as a piece of pop music gets. A slightly muffled piano and hopelessly downtrodden vocals combine gracefully until the onslaught of strings renders the occasion truly…
If Korn’s expansive Untouchables slammed the coffin lid on narrow-minded nü-metal, Papa Roach’s second album–released just one week later–pounds in the nails. An abrupt turn away from the rap-rock that characterized the band’s triple-platinum debut, lovehatetragedy is a sleek, punk-inflected rock record that’s a necessary step forward for these boys…
Hip-hop lovers have splintered off into so many different camps and communities, you have to wonder if many of them even love the same type of music anymore. Since we live in America, the props are invariably handed out to the rich and successful, and every now and again, someone…
Dead 25 years come August 16, Elvis Presley is, once more, the hottest corpse in the ground. Just a few days ago, he topped the pops in the United Kingdom for the first time since he died on the dumper–with a song, no less, that was relatively unknown to all…
Chris Isaak and Natalie Merchant are, for all intents and purposes, king and queen of the post-punk prom. After all, both seem to have shucked off any native spark of f-you energy, each of them eagerly trotting off to more (and MOR) easily digested pastures. When Merchant used her shimmering…
If you’re pumped to see every band hitting town with the Warped Tour on Friday, you’re either insane or you’re 12. But if you’re an aging skate rat with more than a passing interest in what the heirs to your throne are up to (or you’re 12 but you really…
Julia Fordham’s new Concrete Love is smooth sounds, all right, kinda jazzy and intimate, and bubbly with the occasional quasi-Brazilian rhythm, with a thin veneer of self-congratulatory sophistication. It’s music for former music lovers, and it completely lacks teeth. But it wasn’t always so. Her 1988 self-titled debut and 1989…
