The history books are full of great musical collaborations that have thrived despite bitter personal conflicts: Reed and Cale, McCartney and Lennon, Sonny and Cher. Add to that list teenage Azerbaijani Anar Badalov and his musical life partner, Flora Wolpert-Checknoff, better known as the Baltimore indie-pop duo Metal Hearts. While…
Lovelorn Southwestern ballads permeate Cordero’s endlessly romantic repertoire — little surprise, given that the Brooklyn-based act has embarked on collaborations with Calexico and Giant Sand. But for bilingual frontwoman Ani Cordero and husband/drummer Chris Verene (formerly of Rock-A-Teens), no broken heart goes unexamined, no desert mirage is left to the…
Even though the four members of New York’s all-instrumental Gutbucket are trained jazzbos, they’re just as comfortable bouncing between klezmer, prog or Latin-flavored thrash — often within the space of the same tune. Hard rockers at heart, the free-range ensemble has been a staple of the Big Apple’s avant-garde scene…
British singer-songwriter Imogen Heap frequently sings against a backdrop heavy with electronic accoutrements — a creative tack that’s been known to trigger critical repercussions. Take Beth Orton, whose beautiful early albums didn’t receive the respect they deserved because some reviewers suspected her of hiding something behind the studio touches: subpar…
Naming your band after an animal is an easy way to get instant recognition, even if the band being recognized is another, more popular one with a similar-sounding name. Oh, you’re in Wolf Sphincter? Yeah, I’ve heard of that — or maybe I’m just confusing you with the Wolves, Wolf…
Ska! Say it. Sounds funny, huh? And not just because the genre has become one of the most beloved-turned-maligned styles in history since disco. Ska, at its core, is unpretentious, buoyant and just plain goofy. But it has deep soul and jazz attached to its calypso roots, a fact that…
Tool is returning to the spotlight at the perfect moment. During the ’90s, when Maynard James Keenan’s creation thrust its way onto the national scene, the band’s hard-rock contemporaries were suffering from post-grunge depression or incorporating hip-hop elements to create that most gruesome of aural mutants, rap rock. In contrast,…
When one of Denver’s underground mainstays, the Dinnermints, dissolved a couple years back, bassist Doo Crowder fell in with a ramshackle band of players who wound up dubbing their collective Pee Pee. What began as a pastime, however, has evolved into a shifting ensemble that incorporates everything from acoustic guitar…
Over the past twenty years, one of America’s few truly pioneering musical movements has been Chicago’s house scene. The style virtually redefined dance music and has influenced everyone from New Order to Kylie Minogue. Johnny Fiasco (who spins at Vinyl this Saturday, May 6) is among the vanguard DJs who…
Oh, wretched world, where have all the goth nights gone? In Club Scout’s twinkie days, black was the new black, and the best clubs were makeshift warehouses cloaked in clouds of clove-cigarette smoke. The boys wore latex dresses and the girls bled mascara — and how melodramatic it was to…
When I’m sitting on airplanes, people will look at me and ask, ‘Are you in a band? And what kind of music do you make?'” notes Robert del Naja, who raps and conceptualizes for Bristol, England’s Massive Attack under the pseudonym 3D. “I say, ‘We’re kind of an experiment, and…
Last Thursday night I caught Kid Rock at the Colorado Convention Center, and all I have to say is, WTF? Talk about a miserable experience. And I’m not referring to Kid’s performance, which was rote but entertaining. Think Coldplay does arena rock by the numbers? You ain’t seen shit. Or,…
Cowboy Curse ain’t full of cowboys, nor does the band curse (very much). The three-piece is made up of two guys — Ben Bergstrand and Tyler Campo, who sing like girls — and Erin Tidwell, a girl who drums like, well, a beat-keeping madwoman. The Curse plays pop like socially…
Allowing your debut album to share its title with a children’s book is a dicey proposition, but it isn’t the only risk As Tall As Lions has taken. That 2004 album, Lafcadio, was a beautifully textured, sonically rich and emotionally dynamic beast that allowed listeners to smell both Hey Mercedes…
Barry Burns, a keyboardist and guitarist for Scotland’s Mogwai, is downright jubilant. “We’ve been in Rotterdam, so people have been bringing me joints all day,” he announces in a brogue thickened by giddiness. When asked if his smoke intake will ensure a good interview, he replies, “Don’t count on it”…
When George W. Bush’s domestic-wiretapping program went into effect, you can bet that Boots Riley of the Coup was at the top of the surveillance list. But a lot has happened since Tuesday, September 11, 2001 — the day the Coup’s Party Music was released, bearing a cover that portrayed…
Spending time with the Starlight Mints’ latest release, Drowaton, is like wandering through a carnival funhouse, bouncing down rippling hallways past mind-bending mirrors to the bipolar accompaniment of lusty keyboard swirls, dagger-wielding lyrics and sighed choruses. Funny thing is, the longer you stay in the Mints’ funhouse, the more the…
Music-biz publicists probably feel as if they’re on a safari these days. Earlier this year, Britain’s Arctic Monkeys rode a wave of hype onto these shores. And now here comes Wolfmother, three Aussies dubbed by Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly as rock’s next saviors. In truth, there’s absolutely nothing new…
Picking a favorite from Drive-By Truckers’ last three albums is a fool’s errand. Even so, A Blessing and a Curse may prove their most enduring. Not as yoked to the Southern-fried country-rock sound they built, the Truckers’ stylistic stretching on Curse is accompanied by several gut-wrenching paeans: Mike Cooley threatens…
At one point in hardcore’s past, Detroit’s legendarily nihilistic Negative Approach was one of the scene’s big influences. Today it’s been eclipsed by Professional Approach. Pro Approach, however, isn’t a band; it’s an attitude, a mindset that makes young groups pay more attention to “promotion techniques” and “potential fan bases”…
In the hard-rock world, “invisible orange” is a term used to describe the claw-like hand gestures that trendsetters currently prefer to devil horns, which are now so commonplace they’ve lost much of their demonic power. That means members of the band called Invisible Orange would like listeners to throw invisible…
Kip Boardman, Hello, I Must Be(Mesmer Records). Short attention spans will miss the sledgehammer slyly hidden in Skip Boardman’s deceivingly delicate pop songs. But make it to the steel-guitar-accented cover of Steely Dan’s “Dirty Work,” and you’ll almost certainly dig deeper into this sophisticated, too-cool little record that contains a…
