On Hot Water Music’s latest album, Caution, the group shows a strange obsession with defeat, visiting again and again themes of falling and hitting the ground with a thud. Singer-guitarists Chuck Ragan and Chris Wollard (who are backed by bass player Jason Black and drummer George Rebelo) sing, “That a…
Conjuring a prototypical underage Saturday afternoon in the city, Arlo strains its sunshine-drenched power pop through a gritty colander of Gen-X smog, then magically regurgitates it as pure retro pleasure. Having mastered the arcane art of writing hooks hypnotic and muscular enough to charm a cobra, the Los Angeles band…
The new post-punk descends upon Denton. New York’s Ex Models have a new split EP out with the Seconds, a band that features one of the dudes from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs; the Models’ side is very fast and includes riffs that don’t leave much room for elaboration. Pretty Girls…
Peaches derives power from her follicles just as Samson did; it’s just that hers are shorter and curlier. Witness her self-directed video for “Set It Off,” which opens with the Carla-from-Cheers-looking rapper perched on a urinal: a Eurotart in pink undies and cheapo aviator sunglasses. She chants the song from…
On Tuesday, Interscope Records at long last released Nirvana, a 14-song best-of that features not only tracks from Bleach, Nevermind, In Utero and Unplugged, but the long-lost “You Know You’re Right.” The song, recorded almost a decade ago by Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, had been tied up…
By the time The Fugs released their self-titled debut album in 1966, lead vocalist and lyricist Ed Sanders had already established Beatnik street cred as the heart and soul of the legendary NYC Peace Eye Bookstore in 1964, and two years earlier as the publisher of a prototypical Lower East…
Christy Darlington wishes he’d never gotten so many tattoos. Well, not really, but he knows they give people the wrong idea, especially women. The girls those tats attract think they’re getting a typical punk-rock boyfriend, he says, someone who can keep up with them, raise at least a little hell…
The acolyte will deride the obvious misses amid this collection of hits, among them “The Fly,” “Please,” “The Wanderer” and “Elevation,” at least the Tomb Raider remix that would have fit nicely on the wobbly dancefloor-bound Disc Two; the casual fan won’t even notice, since the casual fan skipped most…
Surprising to see No Doubt still hard at work behind Rock Steady, the surprisingly excellent album the surprisingly long-running Orange County outfit released nearly a year ago. Not because the record can’t support it–it could probably withstand two more singles, in fact–but because the disc suggested the band was more…
Trustworthy sources say Anglo-Brazilian producer Amon Tobin sells more records than any other Ninja Tune artist. What makes this factoid surprising is the sheer strangeness of Tobin’s music. Neither intended for chill-out rooms nor suitable for moving moneymakers, his tracks are the sonic analogue to Salvador Dali’s paintings: maniacally detailed,…
Well, I guess this is growing up. The Brooklyn-based fashionistas in Black Dice used to be Providence art-school noiseniks–I remember a brief 2000 disc on Troubleman Unlimited that sounded like a junkyard on fire–but their new Beaches & Canyons (issued via the super-hip NYC indie DFA Records) is an amorphous…
If Black Dice, Karate and k. are making northeast Texas a safe place for wizened college rockers this week, the perpetually adolescent among us need not feel abandoned: Shows by Sum 41 and Everclear and KEGL-FM’s Freakers Ball should provide safe havens for confused teens on the prowl for identity-rich…
They might be terrible dressers, they might have chosen a dreadful band name, they might even be friends with those dorks the Get Up Kids, but don’t let anyone tell you that Lawrence, Kansas, popsters the Anniversary aren’t crafty: Designing a Nervous Breakdown, the band’s tuneful 2000 debut, packed just…
The title of Baboon’s new album, Something Good is Going to Happen to You, is truth in advertising, so long as you crack the shrinkwrap and give it a few listens or, better yet, a few hundred. It would apply just as easily to the band, had someone said it…
“What is hip?” Gov’t Mule front man Warren Haynes asks on The Deep End Volume 2, his band’s new album. For starters, it’s not something anyone who’ll stand onstage at the Gypsy Tea Room on Tuesday night knows much about, which is totally why you should go. These guys are…
It’s been a long time since Rasputina rocked and rolled–though not as long as its Victorian-era costumes might imply. But even after a lengthy hiatus, the all-female trio’s hard-corset blend of gothic imagery, black humor, stark strings and curiously modern industrial effects still seems fresh and charming. Never lapsing into…
Earlier this year, the folks at MTV’s Total Request Live had one for Corn Mo: Play us a Limp Bizkit tune on your accordion. Corn Mo had just regaled TRL’s viewing audience with his passionate rendition of Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine”–delivered without hesitation or irony. Earlier that…
For a rapper, Mike Skinner is awfully reticent. Coaxing an answer out of the English artist is like pulling teeth–which is ironic, given that his recent album is so lyrically thick that many critics seem to have overlooked the music entirely. Original Pirate Material, Skinner’s debut recording as the Streets,…
J.T. Van Zandt remembers just about every detail of his first visit to his father’s world. Townes and J.T.’s mother, Fran, had divorced before he was a year old, and until he was 9, J.T. only saw his father when Townes came to Houston to see his own mother. This…
Pardon us if we’re speaking out of turn, but this is something we’ve been thinking about for a while: Why isn’t there a local label with any sort of national presence? Some have the money, most have the talent. All are run by people who know what they’re doing. And…
Until 2000’s The Hour of the Bewilderbeast, Damon Gough could seep into the scenery, make his music without anyone making a fuss. Which is clearly the way he likes it: Since the beginning, he’s cultivated a sort of look-at-me anonymity, like a superhero who prefers his secret identity yet craves…
Decades after Warner Bros., and a handful of other labels, tried to make Doug Kershaw a star by selling his “crazy Cajun” (read: unreliable madman) shtick to the same folks who were buying Waylon and Willie and Kris and Johnny C., the 66-year-old “Louisiana Man” is still working a closed…
