Music

Although Duran Duran holds a noteworthy place in pop history because of the way it encapsulated the appeal of early MTV, it’s important to remember that, musically speaking, Simon LeBon and company were never very memorable. Okay, a handful of their songs were entertainingly silly, and because the videos that…

Moving at the speed of a glacier, Knife & Fork deploys an electro-torch sound that skirts genres as varied as experimental ambient and the Gregorian blues. Melancholic Laurie Hall, who helms the Bay Area’s Ovarian Trolley, possesses a cystalline yet downbeat voice that transports her emotional baggage through customs without…

Tom Waits evolved from the engaging but seemingly predictable barroom growler of 1973’s Closing Time to the artistic bomb thrower of 1983’s Swordfishtrombones in one astonishing decade — the rarest sort of creative transformation. Since then, he’s grappled with the implications of his innovations, and while the discs he’s made…

Audits, supposedly, are about as pleasurable as a tube of Super Glue squeezed down your urethra. So it’s funny that Audit in Progress, the third full-length by Hot Snakes (appearing Thursday, November 4, at the Bluebird Theater), is the band’s least pain-inflicting release to date. Not that it doesn’t try…

Since the invention of recording technology, party bands have struggled to translate the good times they generate live into a product fans can get the same jolt from at home. In-concert fave Yo, Flaco! faces this challenge head-on throughout The Skinny, whose arrival the group will celebrate on Friday, November…

Listening to Porch Thinkin’, you get the sense that Arkansas Bo was one of those cats that got along with everybody in high school. He’s witty, funny, intelligent and more fun to hang out with than pretty much everyone else. And that persona translates well to his debut disc. Although…

Drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare are not only reggae’s definitive rhythm section and production team, but they’ve worked with every major artist in Jamaica, from Jimmy Cliff, Culture and Peter Tosh to U-Roy, Grace Jones and Beenie Man. Internationally, the pair has provided the crucial bottom end for…

Martial-arts master Bruce Lee believed in “using no way as the way, no limitation as the only limitation.” Jeet Kune Do, the free-form fighting philosophy first conceived by Lee in 1967, was not a rigid list of stylistic rules, but rather a creative method of incorporating the most effective elements…

Those of you who hate Big Toby’s right-wing orthodoxy are making a mistake if you reject his music, too. Sure, he’s got a reactionary streak an acre wide, but so do Merle Haggard and plenty of other country artists worth hearing. Dismissing him because he’s not the Dixie Chicks’ ideological…

There’s nothing better than having your frontman fuck up in public, especially when your band is about to release a new album. Jason Stollsteimer let Jack White go smack-my-bitch-up on his face, and suddenly the Von Bondies became positively anticipated. Likewise, Jeff Tweedy checked into rehab for painkiller addiction and…

Though its shtick of gross-out lyrics, lightning-fast riffs and truly vile artwork should have worn thin by now, Cannibal Corpse is still the most extreme and unflinching band in death metal. Though some of the faces have changed, the Buffalo-based quintet’s sound is much the same today as it was…

Not too many bands can open for Le Tigre one night and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion the next without skipping a beat. Yet after Olympia, Washington’s the Gossip wraps up its current jaunt with Kathleen Hanna’s grrrl-power electro outfit, the trio of Beth Ditto, Kathy Mendonca and Nathan Howdeshell will…

Mike Ness knows all about “bad, bad luck.” Singer/guitarist Ness, who’s the author of that lyric, has experienced plenty of hardship since he formed Social Distortion in 1978, in the midst of L.A.’s burgeoning hardcore scene. The group survived brawls, arrests and revolving membership while making its way through punk’s…

In the hands of introspective virtuoso Robert Eldridge, a guitar can summon the depths of the ocean, conjure deep-space nebulas or transport listeners to a swampy backwoods juke joint soaked in moonshine. Hailing from Charleston, West Virgina, the lead electric-ax-man for Zeut has spent much of his 25-year career exploring…

While dance music has always been about exploring new sounds, it’s the hits that bring people to the clubs. Folks don’t generally go clubbing to hear some DJ strike an esoteric pose with his playlist; what they want to do is party and have a good time. Pete Tong plays…

Sometimes we get things off to a slow start,” says Todd Baechle, revealing a trace of modesty not usually apparent as he slinks and swaggers, often in makeup, around the stage during a Faint show. “And people are a little bit creaky at first.” Yeah, right. The last time the…

Minneapolis’s only suicide hotline. Leave your name, number, and your reason for wanting to die…” This is the message that greets callers when Eyedea’s voice mail picks up. While it’s easy to think that the rapper is just being morose, his friends get it. When they leave messages saying “Death…

Three years doesn’t seem like a long time between records, but kids today — sorry, but that’s who buys Jimmy Eat World albums — don’t have that much patience. The high school sophomore who fell for Jimmy Eat World’s 2001 breakthrough, Bleed American, is now a college freshman falling for…

Omaha’s Son, Ambulance finally delivers on the indie-pop promises of its debut EP, Oh, Holy Fools. Joe Knapp, the reckless and impassioned singer-songwriter driving the ambulance, has assembled eleven timeless and ecstatically melancholy gems into one career-defining album. If Badly Drawn Boy recorded an album of Jackson Browne and Leonard…

Talk about missing the boat. When Moving Units’ debut EP came out in 2002, it actually sounded kind of fresh for being a slab of retro rehash. Filling the cracks between the Rapture’s post-punk appropriation and the Strokes’ garbled, tattered pop, it was easy to imagine then that the Units’…

In the age of Interpol, a comprehensive overview of the rock made between new wave and grunge is as timely as can be. Although Left of the Dial, a four-CD boxed set, doesn’t pin down each influence or solve every mystery, it provides an effective summary of an interesting period…