This fall will mark the 32nd anniversary of the wreck of the freighter S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, sunk in the cold waters of Lake Superior in 1975, an event enshrined in song by Gordon Lightfoot just a year after the fact and one which continues to reverberate in surprising locations across…
Jana Hunter isn’t in a talkative mood. She picks her words slowly and gives brief, sometimes ambiguous answers punctuated with odd pauses. “So, do you see any difference between American and European audiences?” I ask. (An extremely long pause) “I don’t know. Maybe,” she finally says. With her green jacket…
Rabid packs of fans flail about, nearly soiling themselves, when the Teeth perform—aside from the band’s truculent live set, the audience is a show in itself. Philadelphia’s Teeth count twin brothers in its chemical makeup, and the four-piece have noticeably honed their shambolic, chaotic rock with doo-wop backups and scorching…
With stunning production from old rival Marley Marl, KRS-One delivers a sharp retort to Nas’ recent proclamation that Hip-Hop Is Dead—but not without kicking some dirt on gangsta culture. The highlights on this 12-track disc are many, including “Nothing New,” in which the Teacher delivers his indictment via a Rasta…
Former Chomsky guitarist Glen Reynolds’ solo debut opens and closes with songs about the two kinds of fear that love provokes, sometimes simultaneously: the fear that a relationship won’t last and the fear that it will. Opener “Setting Sun” is especially strong, with its soaring chorus of “All I can…
What is Ozzy now, 100 or something? You’d think the old coot would call it a career rather than further tarnish his legacy. Like most icons past their prime, though, maybe he just doesn’t know when to say when. He’s clearly saddled by idiots. Why else would he choose to…
With a career spanning nearly 15 years, Washington state’s MxPx has always belied the Christian-themed punk-pop tag that is often used to describe them. Starting out as innocent skaters who released 7-inch singles while still in high school, the band hit it relatively big with their 1996 effort Life in…
This Portland trio clearly doesn’t want people to know much about its background. Its latest album, Friend and Foe, though visually impressive with its cutout CD booklet and clever use of contrasting colors, contains almost nothing in the way of information about the band. The band also makes a concerted…
With a table-clearing smash of Who-like power chords, Radio Birdman grandly announced that they were back in the game from the very first track—the appropriately titled “We’ve Come So Far (to Be Here Today)”—on 2006’s Zeno Beach (Yep Roc), the legendary Australian band’s first album of new material in a…
With a history that includes redundant hard-core punkers Heart Attack and pretentious glam rockers D Generation, it would be fairly easy to write off Jesse Malin. Yet one listen to Glitter in the Gutter, Malin’s recent third effort, proves what a mistake that would be. After the demise of D…
We begin our night at House of Blues. The foxy members of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club laze about the stage, all tight jeans and shabby shirts. They look as if they should be onstage at CBGB. Well, sort of—something’s off. Something’s off because they appear sober and lucid, their pants…
Summer school, bitches! That’s right, it’s time for the poolside edition of our challenge to your music knowledge and general test-taking abilities. Choose the correct answer from the multiple choices; sharpen your pencils, and don’t cheat, slackers. 1) Math question: If you throw down a couple hundred bucks for a…
Tone-y, Tone-y, Tone-y: Dallas trio Rawly Punt just released Fleshtone, a collection of lysergic roots rock tunes along the lines of their first release, Anthems. Highlight of the disc, which was recorded in town at Miles of Sound: the group’s version of the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer,” featuring Annette Conlon’s…
Take their performances as a whole and the two Dallas acts on the bill of the Sasquatch! Festival in George, Washington, perfectly epitomize the May 26-27 experience: a combination of unexpected transcendence and disappointment. Even in challenging circumstances, St. Vincent and the Polyphonic Spree did their best to show that…
“Guitar has always been associated as a male right of passage,” says Larkin, “but women like Rory Block, Memphis Minnie and Elizabeth Cotton broke the glass guitar ceiling years ago.” All three of those guitarists, plus a dozen more, are featured on La Guitara, making it the most representative sampling…
Combining the otherworldly power of literature with that of the almighty riff, Harry and the Potters represent the next generation of schoolhouse rock. Formed by muggles Paul and Joe DeGeorge, who perform as Harry at years four and seven, the Potters perform at libraries and transform the Hogwarts School of…
Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn and George Jones: Which of the three is the coolest of the cool? We decided to answer that question once and for all, according to four criteria: Podunk Cred, Outlaw Life, Songwritin’ and Wack Factor. Merle Haggard Podunk Cred: Born in California, which is a strike…
Forty years ago, as frontman for the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed convinced us that the path to bliss was through a needle to the vein. In 1975, he released Metal Machine Music, a two-disc solo album composed entirely of guitar feedback, proof he was still an innovator and still stoned…
The most perverse moment on R. Kelly’s new album is, surprisingly, neither “The Zoo”—a slow-jam full of animal noises that suggests he and his lady had some company in the sack—nor “Sex Planet,” which offers a particularly unfortunate metaphor for back-door action. It’s “Rise Up,” the product of Kelly’s belief…
It’s been four years since Fountains of Wayne’s last studio album, but the wait has been more than worth it, because FOW produces incredibly well-constructed pop. Besides a gift for hummable melodies, the group’s bite-size vignettes of middle-class angst (think John Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom) reveal a novelist’s eye for detail…
People who try to change the ones they love rather than accepting them as they are typically wind up wedded to disappointment. The same concept can be applied to British singer-songwriter Carina Round. The Disconnection, Round’s 2004 American debut, was a raw wonder, but because it racked up more glowing…
Most notably known as the lead singer, lyricist and guitarist for the post-hard-core quartet Thrice, Dustin Kensrue tackles an entirely different beast on his solo debut Please Come Home. While mining a stripped-down folk approach that salutes Springsteen’s Nebraska, Kensrue is still an angst-ridden young man, an emo kid trying…
