“And life is like a song,” sings Etta James on “At Last,” one of her most enduring numbers. Although the track is centered around the title refrain, this particular lyric stands out as one that mirrors James’s life, which has been riddled with pain, bolstered by hope and built upon…
What’s not to love about DeVotchKa? To hear its songs even once is to fall hopelessly, head over heels in love. With what, you ask? Anything and anyone within earshot, as the music makes the most mundane things seem worthy of romanticizing. Even when the band is covering other people’s…
If electronic music has been around long enough to have dinosaurs, then Evil Eddie Richards could be considered one. Richards (due at Shelter this Saturday, July 15) was among the first DJs to break house music in the U.K. during the ’80s burgeoning rave scene. The original warehouse parties where…
Who would have imagined that a poke in the eye during a pickup basketball game would have such a profound effect on Doug Martsch’s life and his music career? The Built to Spill frontman didn’t think much of it when he sustained the injury earlier this year. An eventual trip…
King Rat has been an ongoing concern for Luke Schmaltz for the better part of eleven years. During this time, despite numerous personnel shifts, he’s remained unapologetically faithful to a gritty, no-frills gutter-punk approach that pays homage to booze and broads while evoking a sound made famous by Mike Ness…
Being the progeny of famous musicians isn’t always a guaranteed ticket to stardom. For every Rufus Wainwright or Jakob Dylan, there’s an Adam Cohen, whose band, Low Millions, didn’t quite produce the same genius lyrics that dad Leonard did. Or there’s Sean Lennon and half-brother Julian, who have yet to…
Julie Christmas, the alternately angelic and aggressive singer for the artfully noisy space-sludge outfit Made Out of Babies, rated a full-page photo in Revolver’s March 2006 “Hottest Chicks in Metal” issue. Christmas says that this accolade prompted guys she grew up with in Brooklyn to ask, “Who did ya get…
“We definitely try to create situations that are uncomfortable — and it’s conscious,” confirms Ben Weinman, guitarist for the metalcore maestros in New Jersey’s Dillinger Escape Plan. “We think that’s important, because music’s so safe and everything’s so predictable.” In contrast, Weinman is devoted to confounding expectations, and he’s gotten…
Thom Yorke’s first individual outing is about what you’d expect — a glitchy, primarily electronic excursion that mirrors Radiohead’s most recent work. The Eraser’s dour compositions conjure the icy, detached vibe of Kid A and Amnesiac, and were it not for Yorke’s beguiling melodies and consistently compelling fey falsetto, it…
The video for “Ready to Fall,” the lead single from Rise Against’s latest salvo, is like a punk-rock version of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, except with fewer shots of melting icebergs and a lot more images of doomed wildlife: dead deer, dead dolphins, baby chicks riding a conveyor belt…
Aloe Blacc has been unfairly smeared as the indie R. Kelly, an onerous association that shortchanges Blacc’s depth, versatility and amazing absorption of everything from A Tribe Called Quest and Isaac Hayes to slippery salsa and down-tempo electronica. Covering Sam Cooke’s spare hymn “Long Time Coming,” Blacc transforms the cut…
As the Terror Squad’s official DJ, Miami-based DJ Khaled has made a name for himself on the mixtape scene over the past few years. So when it came time to make his inaugural record, he had a long list of artists he could use on the project. Typically, a DJ…
Kelly David is one of Colorado’s most unusual recording artists — a lawyer and sometime radio DJ who also happens to be a skilled producer of electronic/ambient music. While his latest recording may not be as immediately striking as his 2002 masterwork, Broken Voyage, it’s (moderately) more accessible and eventually…
The transformation of No Fair Fights has been absolutely stunning. Just two years ago, the group was churning out mediocre, cookie-cutter pop punk. But the outfit’s musicianship has taken a quantum leap since then, and its latest effort, a self-titled, seven-song affair, is killer from start to finish. The prog-inflected,…
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, I Stand Alone (ANTI). Primarily a collection of short country-folk vignettes in the Bob Dylan vein, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s I Stand Alone is at once poetic and homespun. With bare-bones acoustic production and little derivation, Elliott expands on the traditional lyrical themes of lost love and wanderlust…
It’s no surprise that our most soulful president tapped Buckwheat Zydeco to play both of his inaugurations. Slick Willy knew that no one other than the oft-labeled “world’s greatest party band” could, you know, get the party started. Buck, born Stanley Dural Jr., refuses to follow a set list, opting…
I’m sick to death of instrumental rock. There are just too many mathy, proggy, wanky outfits these days, trying to impress us with their fretboard acrobatics, fractal time signatures and abstract harmonies. With more notes per minute than Charlie Parker, some of today’s vocal-less ensembles practically numb the ears and…
Imagine it’s 1925, and you and yours have decided to spend Friday night at the club. On stage is a new female duet with a forward-thinking way of melding jazz, swing, tightly woven harmonies and vaudeville-era musical theater. There’s a tall drink o’ water on the mandolin and dulcimer –…
As a graf artist, DJ and MC, AWOL came up in the same California underground scene that gave birth to such respected hip-hop artists as the Shape Shifters and the Project Blowed crew. He’s released a handful of projects with the likes of Daddy Kev and Fat Jack and has…
Potter and her band hail from Vermont, a state with a musically Phishy image, and Nothing but the Water, the title of the Nocturnals’ first CD, does nothing to dispel this reputation. But if some of the picking and playing showcased on the album draws from the same well Trey…
You might have heard this one before. The guitarist channels his emotive heroes while the rhythm section pounds with aggression and class. They start out rocking hard, proudly displaying their harder influences — maybe Budgie, Fugazi or Mission of Burma. But faster than you can say “Yoko Ono,” the female…
Back in 2002, DJ Paul Oakenfold released Bunkka, a disc that presented him as a recording artist rather than a superstar spinner. Withering reviews followed, but he scored a major dance-music hit anyway, courtesy of “Starry Eyed Surprise,” a melody-happy slammer warbled by one of the most unlikely collaborators imaginable:…
