By now, the story of how the Foo Fighters’ fourth album happened–and almost didn’t–has been well-documented, to the point of becoming humdrum legend among the faithful legions waiting anxiously three years on. There was, in no particular order of importance, drummer Taylor Hawkins’ near-demise, after swallowing the dumb-ass’ cocktail of…
Last week Dallas was hit hard by commercial pop-punk bands committed to giving the form as complication-free a reading as possible; this week we’re getting a handful of outfits using major-label cash to make rock that defies the expectations that have come to dog aggressive music. Not that you’ll see…
Of course, we should only talk about the music. Of course, we should. Home is, by far, the best album the Dixie Chicks have recorded, more than worthy of a few hundred listens and, at the very least, a separate discussion. But they want it this way: The group didn’t…
The three founding members of Hi-Fi Drowning–singer-guitarist Eric Martin, bassist Jon Eggert and his brother Jeremy, who fills both the other guitar and keyboard roles–live together in a house in far east Dallas. The band, which also includes drummer Taylor Young (who lives elsewhere), even has a nickname for it:…
Word on the street has it that the blues never influenced Doug Martsch until a couple of years ago, when he heard an Alan Lomax recording of Fred Macdowell playing “Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind on Jesus).” Whereupon, the rumor goes, the erstwhile Built to Spill front man…
A few months ago, we got an e-mail from a publicist at Sub Pop Records, a guy we’ve known for three or four years. He was reminding us that one of the bands on the label was coming to town and were we going to cover it and, oh, by…
Over the course of its last two albums, Low has been investigating methods by which to expand its sound, a pretty natural progression for any group of artists working their way up to LP No. 6, and virtually imperative for a band with an infrastructure as skeletal as theirs. You…
It’s been some time now, and the Hives, the Vines and others of their ilk have to be growing stale in the ears of the powers-that-be at MTV2 by now. Something must fill that gap. Enter Hot Hot Heat (in current terms: a more optimistic Clinic, replete with keyboard-y backbone…
This six-week traveling package tour couldn’t have its heart in a more righteous place. Ten percent of the money made from ticket sales goes to benefit the National Hopeline Network, a Virginia-based suicide-prevention program that aims to give people in trouble easy access to instant telephone counseling, “regardless of where…
Somewhere Tony Wilson is laughing, and Ian Curtis is probably rolling in his grave. Or maybe every other band has always been compared to Joy Division and we just never noticed until sitting through 24 Hour Party People. Leading the pack is Interpol (the apple, for now, of the Big…
Sad dudes, sad tunes. Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys show up first, at Gypsy Tea Room on Thursday night, and it’s a good thing: The precise honky-tonk laments on their third album, Your Favorite Fool, are so genre-specific they don’t demand much unpacking to reveal their lovelorn frowns–all it…
Every last conceit that makes heavy metal both goofy and great is encapsulated on Nile’s fourth full-length, the colossal In Their Darkened Shrines. Sure, it may be hard for those who can’t recite Brendan Fraser’s lines in The Mummy from memory to suppress chuckles at these guys’ preoccupation with Egyptian…
What’s worse than second-generation corporate pop-punk? Third-generation corporate pop-punk! Tell that to tattooed Chicago ne’er-do-wells Mest, who invade the Galaxy Club on Thursday, and they’ll likely spit on your glasses. “The words you say I’ll never listen to,” they promise on “Fuct Up Kid,” a spirited number on the band’s…
In the end, it may have taken Carlos Freaking Santana himself to put an end to rock en español’s favorite sport, Maná bashing. For 11 years, the Guadalajara-based band has been among the genre’s biggest punching bags, derided as fresas (“strawberries”–softies) who make crappy music for preppy kids who don’t…
The Canadian native with the medical condition was angry, and Of Montreal front man Kevin Barnes had no one to blame but himself. The girl had come out to see Barnes’ band in New York, thinking she was supporting musicians from her former country. Unfortunately for the patriotic well-wisher, Of…
Matt Riggle only recently started taking his band, 41 Gorgeous Blocks, seriously. The fact that he’s been in the group for almost three years–and three albums, including this year’s Swallow the Sandwich–doesn’t really matter. It was just something that he did, because he had to, more than anything else. Not…
RJD2 might just be the most talented hip-hop producer you haven’t heard of. Until now, the Columbus, Ohio, turntablist had only a couple of singles to his name, but Deadringer announces his arrival as a major talent behind the mixing desk, while recent tours with his label boss El-P and…
Though I’ve yet to witness the uninhibited live show that reportedly is the band’s raison d’être, New York-based “Ukrainian Gypsy punk cabaret” outfit Gogol Bordello asks an important question on its electrifying new album, Multi Kontra Culti vs. Irony: Why is so much American music of dissent joyless and tiresome…
In country music, as in rock, the dividing line between commercial and alternative has become fuzzy in recent years, as indie-oriented artists found Nashville hungry for good new songs and smaller labels strove to grab talent on its way up. The husband-and-wife duo of Buddy and Julie Miller could be…
Despite its moniker, which name-checks a ’60s soul singer best known for the proto-feminist declaration “Women’s Love Rights,” Division of Laura Lee is among a “new wave” of Swedish acts such as the Hives that are heavily influenced by vintage garage rock and punk. These musical elements are hardly novel,…
Not as raw as Hell’s Kitchen, not as bouncy as Human Condition, the latest offering from Junkyard DJs Ming & FS, Subway Series, is a funky, flexing display of free-flowing hip-hop and quirky subconscious breaks that waxes poetic through a mechanized playing field. The New York natives maintain mainframe traces…
The first thing that’s different about the guy we’re talking to is that he says “a boat” instead of “about.” He’s from Canada–Hamilton, Ontario, specifically–so it’s an easy and obvious joke, and it’s also very true, making us smile to ourselves every time he does it, and he does it…
