For some reason, musicians put a lot of pressure on themselves to come up with clever and ironic band names. This seems especially senseless considering how many good bands have really stupid monikers. Take Sweden’s The Sounds, for instance: Shamelessly generic epithet? You bet. Fortunately, the music doesn’t suck, and…
Depending on your point of view, Armando Perez, who goes by Pitbull, is either a musical pioneer or simply a guy with impeccable timing. The son of Cuban immigrants, he grew up in Miami and eventually got involved in a scene where Latin grooves and dirty-South hip-hop mingle as naturally…
Remember that one cheerleader in high school? You know, the one who discovered Camus, Marx and black lipstick in her junior year? Yeah, that one. She got all nihilistic and started shouting inane chants about murder, social injustice and revolution. And on game days, she dutifully wore her uniform but…
Casual music listeners in the States probably know Irish singer-songwriter Luka Bloom for just one song: his 1992 cover of LL Cool J’s “I Need Love.” Bloom’s rendition of this hip-hop seduction opus, which earned substantial airplay on a slew of radio formats, treated the tune with unexpected respect, resisting…
On that first real spring day — when the air still carries winter’s crispness but the sun feels just a bit closer and the smells are a tad greener — even the most mirthless life gains a spark of joy and hope. It’s the kind of day when stoplights turn…
Considering indie rock’s post-ironic weltanschauung, it’s about fucking time a new band came up with a name that actually sounds like its music. New York City’s Psychic Ills resembles a head full of chaos in which chemical imbalances clash with hallucinogenic bliss, where OCD-looped drones overlap with closed circuits of…
Goatwhore really gets around. Based in New Orleans, where all devilishly good-and-evil music comes from, the four-piece death-metal group boasts guitarist Sammy Duet (of the now-defunct Acid Bath) and lead growler Ben Falgoust (who moonlights with Soilent Green). Rounded out by drummer Zach Simmons — who replaced Zak Nolan –…
Boysetsfire is still a band? Apparently, yes. Bred in Newark, Delaware, the quintet has been shucking out albums for the past decade and racking up as many travel miles as that damn Frontier Airlines dolphin. The Boys are now bearded men, and after burning through four different labels, they’ve settled…
Rocking a laundromat with shitty jam bands? Playing a benefit show for Rwandan refugees while dressed as Chippendales dancers? It’s all par for the course for Fort Collins’s Guns N’ Rosa Parks. Formed in 2004, the band has spent the past couple of years living as irreverently as its name,…
In the 1990s, Toronto may have boasted the biggest dance scene in the world outside of the U.K., but it didn’t have a monopoly on talented jocks emerging from the Great White North. Pushing a sound steeped in dirty bass lines and heavy grooves, Vancouver’s Jay Tripwire (due at Shelter…
On the cool kids’ calendar, Tuesday has been pretty dead. It’s been the night of the week to stay in and update blogs and take self-portraits with the digital camera. But then some surveyors of the scene realized that all that free time was being wasted. “People are used to…
Kronow’s new van is an eyesore. There’s a sheet of plywood bolted to the passenger-side sliding door where a window used to be. The vehicle has oxidized so badly that its paint job, presumably once a deep shade of maroon, is now faded like a month-old bruise. If this van…
Asking Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase to discuss the stability (or reputed lack thereof) of his revered band is like asking George W. Bush about, well, anything: Both clearly know the truth, but neither are talking. Oh, Chase will answer all your questions, sure. But only in a hemming…
Kid Rock is a whore for the spotlight. He admits as much. But sometimes it shines on him when he’s not even looking for it. For instance, a 1999 videotape in which Rock and Creed’s Scott Stapp receive backstage blow jobs was leaked online recently. “Is anybody surprised that’s going…
During a performance at March’s South by Southwest music confab, Editors, a fast-rising Brit quartet, were “building up a nice head of steam,” according to an account by Fort Worth Star-Telegram scribe Cary Darling, when singer Tom Smith “inexplicably threw down his mike and guitar and stormed off stage, with…
When you listen to Taking Back Sunday’s third album, it’s quite clear why the band’s fan base consists mainly of adolescents. Like its prone-to-conformity teenage admirers, the Long Island quintet prefers to let outsiders dictate what it sounds like — and hasn’t yet cultivated a unique identity. Whereas producer Lou…
Some listeners will interpret the Girls’ third disc as the sort of mainstream move currently being attempted by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs — but the alterations in their sound seem inspired more by creative concerns than by commercial calculation. Instead of replacing former guitarist Nathan Thalen with another ax-wielder, the…
Despite hopes to the contrary, the public’s still not tired of bands doing the whole Joy Division thing. If you can stomach another round of Ian-Curtis-via-Interpol, the U.K.’s Editors are among the best of the derivative bunch. Led by singer Tom Smith’s affected monotone vocals, Editors have already gone platinum…
The two men of Erasure trading in their patented synthesizers for twangy, cowboy-country guitars? We’ll pass on the obligatory Brokeback Mountain jokes. Sadly, however, a joke is about the most complimentary thing you could call Union Street. Vince Clarke and Andy Bell have recast nine of their sleek techno-pop gems…
Jazz is something most artists get better at as they grow older, accumulate experiences and learn to translate their souls into sound. At the tender age of 23, Joshua Trinidad already has an incredible head start. Invention, his debut as a leader, is an adventurous disc that filters melody and…
This year’s award for the most bizarre way to start a hip-hop CD goes to Zachary “Status” Young, who kicks off his latest with a sample from 1995’s Grumpier Old Men in which Burgess Meredith tells Jack Lemmon a rambling story without a moral. In contrast, this disc teaches an…
The Ark, State of the Ark (The Rebel Group). The Scissor Sisters’ take on the sultry ’70s meant to charm but succumbed to smarm. So why does the Ark’s venture into similar territory work so much better? Credit a surer feel for glam and bubblegum verities, a more charismatic frontman…
