Music

Elitists may dismiss discs in the Now That’s What I Call Music series as K-Tel comps for the new millennium, but they’re actually a clever response to the downloading age. With songs so easily available individually, rather than bundled in baker’s dozens, NOW’s mix-disc approach is a lot more varied…

Aye, matey. Ye olde accoutrements of seafaring days gone by — mermaids, sea captains, galleons and the like — have become the aural calling cards of the eccentric Portland, Oregon, band called the Decemberists. There is the whiff of days of yore about them, ’tis true, especially on the recently…

Suites: those ornate, flowery compositions that bluebloods in powdered wigs used to listen to between bouts of beheading peasants. Sweets: the sucrose-saturated foodstuffs that make your tooth enamel turn to crud. The two homophones neatly bracket Spelled in Bones, the third full-length by Chicago’s Fruit Bats. Mainly the brainchild of…

“Trance blues” is Otis Taylor’s catchphrase for his sixth record, Below the Fold. And he ought to know: After an up-and-down career that’s spanned nearly four decades, he’s refined his droning, modal blues and hypnotizing groan to a science. But that’s not to imply that Below is short on soul…

Yukster Ben Long juggles musical genres like rubber chickens on this amusing exercise in stylistic sleight of hand. Singing and playing every instrument (minus saxophone and pedal steel) himself, Long seems as comfortable rendering a breezy samba (“Strange Dreams”) as he does flirting with Southern boogie (“Dumpster Divin’ Debra”). And…

Hootie & the Blowfish, Looking for Lucky (Vanguard Records). “Smile at your enemies,” Hootie caterwauls in a modestly politically charged track off the new disc. Guess that means we’ll be seeing Darius Rucker’s pearly whites plenty. If you didn’t hate the Blowfish before, take a listen. This bland assortment of…

For underground rappers landlocked in no-coast Missouri, the breakout success of Tech N9ne did more than lead Kansas City out from under the shadow of neighboring St. Louis, home to the likes of Nelly and Chingy. Because N9ne, now an L.A. resident and the driving force behind Strange Music Inc.,…

Look out, neo-wavers, there’s a new K in town. Put aside that Killers album, shelve the Kasabian CD and prepare to embrace Koufax. The Midwestern quintet has continued to evolve since its 1999 debut, and its third full-length, Hard Times Are in Fashion, stands firmly at the crossroads of neo-wave…

If the Pernice Brothers’ newest full-length, Discover a Lovelier You, sounds just a little more optimistic than earlier releases, it’s an unintended nuance. Singer-songwriter Joe Pernice really doesn’t see it as a radical departure from 2003’s Yours, Mine and Ours, although the press has called it everything from his poppiest…

Five months after the capture of Saddam Hussein, Cross Canadian Ragweed raised a few eyebrows when it performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Arlington Stadium on opening day for a packed house of Texas Rangers fans. Apparently a few freedom-lovers in attendance mistook the Oklahoma-bred roots rockers for maple-leafed hosers from…

It’s tragic that Zolof the Rock & Roll Destroyer gets stuck touring with lousy bands like My Chemical Romance and the Starting Line. While those acts bank on keeping up some sort of punk facade, Zolof pumps out pure, breathtaking pop — and makes no apologies for it. Fronted by…

Rumor has it that the young lookers on this bill are planning to sing and rap as part of Scream Tour IV, not just stand around and display their visual gifts to the admiring multitudes. But as the bare-shouldered, pecs-displaying photos being used to promote the show imply, the performers’…

When you’re just one dude with a mike and a laptop, it’s good to seek strength in numbers. Billy Pollard, the 23-year-old Canadian also known as Knifehandchop, has learned this lesson well. As part of the Paws Across America tour, he’s crisscrossing the country with his Tiberbeat6 labelmates Kid 606,…

During Iron Maiden’s ’80s heyday, positive notices for the band from reviewers not affiliated with the hard-rock specialty press were rarer than gray hairs on Ving Rhames’s head. The outfit’s sound, driven by hell-bent drummer Doug Sampson and featuring the eviscerating vocals of lead shrieker Bruce Dickinson, produced heavier metal…

Logophobia — the fear of words — has taken on all kinds of meanings beyond those of mere pathology: Michel Foucault defined it as angst caused by the capricious nature of language, while Peter Farb considered it an aversion to abstraction itself. And although Denver’s Peña avoids lyrics like the…

After spending years behind the scenes, Tommie Sunshine has stepped into the spotlight and turned dance music on its ear. Although the New York City-based DJ came of age in the Midwestern rave scene, it wasn’t until the electroclash explosion of the new millennium that he really began to make…

“It’s like I’m looking at this spaceship sitting on this tarmac, and we’re all tied together, connected to this cable, and we can hear the countdown. And we’re like, ‘Oh, my God, this thing’s going to pull away and our lives are going to disappear.'” Isaac Slade is reading a…

When singer/guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt pits what he calls his “death voice” against the most brutal backdrop his bandmates can construct, Scandinavia’s Opeth is as fierce as any group on the planet. At other times, though, Åkerfeldt comes across as downright sensitive. Unlike one-dimensional metal maniacs, who compulsively growl about disembowelings…

For Sufjan Stevens, everything goes back to Bigfoot. As a young boy, Stevens was asked to do an oral report on Oregon for a social studies class. While doing his research, he came across a book on the frightening furry phenomenon and decided to incorporate it into his assignment. When…

Green Day who? If Boys Night Out’s Trainwreck is any indication, the new colors of punk-rock opera are black, blue and, above all, blood red. Whereas the Canadian quintet’s deliberately emo-core debut, Make Yourself Sick, dealt with slicing up girlfriends and disposing their parts about the house, the Boys’ followup…

“The words of Woody Guthrie ringing in my head,” sings Jay Farrar on “Bandages & Scars.” So begins Okemah and the Melody of Riot, the eagerly anticipated fourth disc by the renovated Son Volt. Okemah is Guthrie’s Oklahoma birthplace — but Farrar’s former bandmate, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, paid far…