So there’s death metal and speed metal, classic metal and hair metal. Bet you didn’t know there’s something called “Southern Metal,” though, didja, much less enough of it ’round these parts to fill a whole three-day festival. Indeed there is, and the genre’s pretty much what you would expect: heavy…
“Environmentalism is not a partisan issue,” says Martin Sexton. “It’s a human issue.” Speaking from his home in Boston a few days before the second leg of a cross-country tour, the guitarist, singer and songwriter has decided to add activist to his already full résumé. Using only biodiesel fuel in…
Josh Baish doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. That’s no insult: The Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studio owner-manager volunteers as much before an interview. The lesson must be fresh on his mind after he pissed off many a bearded man last month by entertaining the notion of moving the…
The third installment of the Fry Street Concert Series will be a headbanger’s dream but exhausting for those who need a little variety in a six-hour music fest. Honky—with former Butthole Surfer Jeff Pinkus on the Flying V bass—is all neck tattoos, curly brim cowboy hats and distorted slide guitars,…
No Festivus for the rest of us: So the yahoos at Yahoo!Buzz (the Web engine’s pop culture site that keeps track of stuff like who is the most Google’d American Idol performer, etc.) recently tallied up which summer music fests are the most popular, Top 10-style, and guess what? Not…
As Pitchfork Media once said of the group Silkworm, consistency without spectacle can make for a tough sell. This axiom also applies to the Sea and Cake, but it has been mitigated somewhat by their danceability, which came to a head on 2000’s Oui and 2003’s One Bedroom, as the…
Keyboards blur and bubble, guitars loop like a Möbius strip, chorale arrangements and found sounds (muted trumpet, birdsong and static) stack and stack, a bereft acoustic guitar or piano anchors the melodies, and Robin Bennett sings with a quizzical, not-quite-falsetto voice. The critical gossip? The Oxfordshire, England, quartet is crushed…
Let’s just get this out of the way: The National’s Boxer does not rock. Unlike Alligator or Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers, the “single options” are few (“Fake Empire,” “Mistaken for Strangers”). Instead, the album is a surprisingly cohesive introspection (if it’s fictional, honestly, I don’t want to know) that…
In 1967, there were many singers claiming to be poets, but Leonard Cohen was a real poet who was trying to be a singer. And although there are still critics who decry Cohen’s singing ability, very few disparage the man’s strengths as a wordsmith. These reissues of Cohen’s first three…
In an era when you can practically take every album into the critic’s version of the CSI laboratory (complete with Zero 7 playing in the background) in order to determine its exact points of reference and the width of its bandwagon tread, it’s refreshing to hear something like Welcome’s Sirs,…
High school proms are tragic. The potential that something will go absurdly wrong is likely with teens amidst hormonal rage making sartorial decisions of taffeta and tails. Whether it was in the ’70s or the ’90s, those prom photos of yours will only raise eyebrows and suffer guffaws. Face it,…
To some extent, the lyrics of pop music are about emotion, specifically of the romantic variety. Oh sure, there are the occasional forays into intellectual queries, or literary ruminations, or mathematical formulae, but truly even the arithmetic boils down to two formulae: 1+1=2 and, more often, 2-1=1. Given the trite…
In the California desert during Coachella it’s always time to boogie. At this year’s festival, the Arctic Monkeys strapped on their “Dancing Shoes,” Peeping Tom got their mojo working, LCD Soundsystem brought the Sound of Silver, Hot Chip knocked out assembly-line dance grooves and the Decemberists interrupted their set with…
Austin-based Ghostland Observatory say they’re “not a band, but an agreement between two friends to create something that not only heals their beat-driven hearts, but pleases their rock and roll souls.” Whether or not they’re a band, the friends—singer Aaron Behrens and producer/drummer Thomas Turner—certainly do produce good music. On…
Chris Demiglio, the slightly rotund, bald frontman (and namesake) of this Denton quartet, is, for better or worse, a dead ringer for Frank Black. The fact that his band channels the best attributes of the Pixies only makes simplistic comparisons that much easier to make. Yardling, the band’s just released…
Proceed with caution if you plan on mixing alcohol or sedatives with this dreamy indie line-up. Clientele winces the night away with a gorgeous blend of ’60s pop, poignant and pensive, led by the soothing vocals of Alasdair MacLean, who manages to sound a bit like each member of the…
Dee Prescott, frontwoman for this Canadian doom metal quartet, looks like a Joan Jett starter kit, but once she lets loose her commanding roar, it’s obvious that she’s from an entirely different universe. Don’t Worry Lady, I Hate Sally’s sophomore effort, is a raging beast of a disc, a 10-song…
The life and music of Red Hunter, better known as Peter and the Wolf, moves like the wind through chimes: weightless, pensive and meditative. The nomadic singer-songwriter’s gorgeous lo-fi tales of distance and clime convey his intrinsic knack for adventure. Last summer, as part of a widely publicized and documented…
Wilco’s latest album, Sky Blue Sky (due out May 15), so far appears to be polarizing fans and critics alike; people either love or loathe the group’s meandering, rootsy direction. In the spirit of dialogue, here are two takes on Sky from two longtime fans—one who’s enthusiastic and one who’s,…
Booze? Music? We’re all over it: OK, sure, Billboard magazine wrote up the Good Records/Urbano Restaurant Rock ‘n’ Roll Wine Dinners a while back, but hey, DO broke the news on Unfair Park. But this isn’t about us; this is about Dinner No. 3, which takes place Monday, May 21,…
Things have never been easy for platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated, neo-soul crooner Anthony Hamilton. Before briefly touching superstardom with his 2003 So So Def hit Comin’ From Where I’m From, Hamilton bounced from short-lived record label to short-lived record label. Hamilton, who honed his gritty chops singing in his Charlotte, North Carolina,…
The whole point of Because of the Times, according to Kings of Leon frontman Caleb Followill, is to throw the unsuspecting listener for a loop. And the group’s third full-length should have no trouble pulling off that one. The Kings have abandoned their earlier worship of Damn the Torpedoes and…
