Talk is cheap. Well, not that cheap, according to Brice Hancock, guitarist for Rubber Planet. He just bought DenverMessageBoard.com — lock, stock and flaming posters. And while Hancock won’t divulge the actual purchase price, he does say that in order to close the deal, he had to take out a…
In his videos and appearances on VH1’s seemingly endless parade of pop-culture nostalgia shows, singer-songwriter Jason Mraz comes across as bubbly and effervescent. Today, however, he’s apparently lost his fizz. Granted, he’s got his reasons. His visit to scenic Rochester, New York, has been interrupted by an interview, and because…
Cameron Crowe recalls how, in 1982, he had to fight with Universal Studios execs over the soundtrack to a little movie he had written called Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The studio wanted a conventional score — strings and things, very old-fashioned. Crowe demanded something the SoCal kids in the…
Although Decemberists vocalist Colin Meloy went on a solo tour this past winter, Picaresque, the Portland, Oregon, band’s third album, is arguably its lushest yet. The nuanced production of Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla finally matches Meloy’s obsession with detail: Horns, strings and accordion drift in and out of…
When you first listen to Vaux’s major-label debut, Beyond Virtue, Beyond Vice, it sounds like little has changed from the smarter-than-most melodic metalcore of the act’s last effort, Plague Music. Then “Need to Get By” kicks in with its “Paranoid Android” vocals, soft-loud dynamics and volatile trajectory, and things just…
In 1970, Sister Gertrude, a painter and preacher who sermonized on street corners in the French Quarter, released an album titled Let’s Make a Record. More than three decades later, Rope-adope label head Andy Hurwitz found the obscure recording while in a New Orleans record store and immediately called producer…
Twenty-five years ago, Paul Weller would have smashed a pint glass in your face for calling him the punk version of Steve Winwood. But the analogy nearly fits. Both legendary English songwriters started out in blistering R&B-based bands and went on to dabble in groove-locked psychedelics and sultry rock. But…
Listeners who think of electronic music as a recent innovation will be disabused of that notion by this fascinating boxed set. The compilation’s earliest example of electro dates back to 1937, and many of its most bizarre offerings were created in the ’50s and ’60s, before performers such as Aphex…
Over the past decade-plus, Ty Burhoe, a Boulder tabla expert, has performed solo, in groups like Curandero, and as a sideman for string wizard Tony Furtado and many others. No matter the setting, Burhoe’s work has been consistently intelligent and sonically impeccable, and Sky, the first release for his new…
“Love Song,” by the Cure, is a great tune. And its almost as good when rearranged slightly to become “Devil,” the opener of Cat-A-Tac’s eponymous debut EP (whose release will be celebrated on October 21 at the Walnut Room). In fact, most of the disc’s five cuts are comfortably derivative…
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, 20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection: The Best of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (Interscope). It was an admirable concept (cheap but solid greatest-hits packages), but the 20th Century Masters series has officially jumped the shark with this release. Selecting only from Big Bad Voodoo Daddy’s…
Dischord, the hallowed post-hardcore imprint, has been getting all kinds of folky lately. First, members of Lungfish released a haunting, bare-bones disc under the name Pupils, and then label founder and Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye formed the Evens, a hushed, strum-laden combo. Now that Q and Not U — Dischord’s…
East of El Segundo’s refineries and beachfront ghettos, Hawthorne, California, remains an unassuming musical bastion, home to the Beach Boys, pop wunderkind Emitt Rhodes, and Greg Ginn of Black Flag. It’s also the stamping grounds for dios (malos), Angelinos who share Brian Wilson’s love of druggy melodies and rich vocal…
On Catch Thirty-Three, Meshuggah’s latest, the music occasionally quiets or slows, but it doesn’t lapse for over 45 often deafening yet frequently exhilarating minutes. In that sense, the disc mirrors the band, which shows no signs of stopping, either. The group was founded in Sweden circa the late ’80s and…
Eric Elbogen doesn’t know my mother. And after listening to Ferocious Mopes, his third CD under the name Say Hi to Your Mom, I’m not sure I’d even introduce them. First of all, at 23, he’s way too young for her. Plus, she’s really not into whiners — trust me…
Lately, New York’s the Hold Steady has gotten more ink than a hipster covering up that embarrassing Lorax tattoo he got in college — and with good reason. The boisterous quintet sounds like ’70s-era E Street Band on meth and PBR, with motor-mouthed frontman Craig Finn spouting tales of Catholic…
Fifteen years ago, the flashy harmonica and sly vocal delivery of John Popper helped cement a new subset of pop music. Picking up where the Grateful Dead left off, Blues Traveler — along with the formative H.O.R.D.E. tours the group organized and headlined — popularized dozens of bands such as…
Whereas most rappers make a name for themselves by slaying competitors in freestyle rhyme battles, MC Chris came up through strange circumstances: voicing a cartoon spider. Fans of the Cartoon Networks cult favorite Adult Swim series should know Chris from his hyper-obnoxious voice as Hesh on Sealab 2021 and various…
There are two routes taken on most collaborations between distinctive musicians. Either one fantastic sound disappears while the other dominates (see Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz or those electronic tracks with Neil Tennant on lead vocals), or both sounds disappear and a lifeless, unremarkable disgrace remains (see Velvet Revolver, Audioslave, the Thorns)…
Plenty of reviewers ripped on 2004’s Love, Angel, Music, Baby, No Doubt-er Gwen Stefani’s solo debut, because it was superficial. “An exercise in showy artifice,” sniffed a Los Angeles Times pundit. “Pure fluff,” added a Drawer B scribe. But even though both of these statements are defensible, they miss the…
Just as Planes Mistaken for Stars finished inking a new deal with Abacus, a subsidiary of Century Media, the group’s side project, Ghost Buffalo, joined the roster of local punk institution Suburban Home. The sad news? Matt Bellinger has quit Planes — which he helped found in 1998 — to…
David Schifino has been playing the underground rave circuit as DJ Venom since the early ’90s, after cutting his teeth as a hip-hop battle DJ. Finding the hard-core techno scene a better fit, Venom took hip-hop’s turntablism and applied it to techno, resulting in a unique electro-booty mash-up. Over the…
