Pyramid scheme: Faithful fans — and a few DJs — were left out in the cold this month when they discovered that Club Ra and Pharoah’s Lounge, Egyptian-themed sibling venues at 1111 Lincoln Street, had both closed. Longtime Ra resident Devonte Luv heard the news just days after spinning his…
It’s cold, the sky is spitting rain, and I’m driving a dead man’s car across Texas to see Chin Up Chin Up. The Chicago quintet is playing tonight in Denton, north of Dallas, and since I just spent Thanksgiving with my girlfriend’s family in San Antonio, I figured I’d trek…
Some of the nearly forty holiday discs critiqued below are naughty. Some are nice. And some are as toxic as Aunt Matilda’s fruitcake. As usual, plenty of celebrities are looking to pad their bank accounts via Christmas recordings, and few appear to have broken a sweat while making them. Jessica…
Once upon a time, Bob Seger urged, “Get out of Denver, baby, go, go.” And for many years, if you were a musician in this town, that exhortation would have seemed sage. Today, though, the words sound hollow. Because right now, it’s all about Mootown. Don’t be surprised if a…
Gee whiz, is it Christmastime already? What’s that? I’m sorry: It’s hard to hear you over the sounds of cash registers clanging. Oh, what prompted Jay-Z and Linkin Park to unleash this ill-conceived collaboration upon the masses, you ask? Why, to milk their hardcore fans, of course. Because those are…
When stars who rose to fame in bands toss out a solo album, the music they make on their own often drips with pretentiousness. So it comes as a legitimate relief to discover that the grandest personal statement on Love, Angel, Music, Baby, Gwen Stefani’s inaugural outing, is the “What…
As a self-described introduction to the music of Junior Kimbrough, this tribute album fails spectacularly: These versions of his songs are so radically and haphazardly interpreted that they give only the faintest clue as to what set Kimbrough apart from other such venerated bluesmen. And yet almost every eclectic cut…
At its best, Crunk Juice isn’t so much a recapitulation of Lil Jon’s previous work as an amplification of it. The beats are beatier. The synths are synthier. The screaming is screamier. “It’s the most incredible experience you ever felt in your fuckin’ life!” he declares on the title cut,…
Mike Kinsella must be getting tired. Since he took a detour from Joan of Arc in 1999 to begin recording his own material — first in the group American Football, and now solo, as Owen — the songwriter has quietly constructed a panopticon of doomed emotional scenarios that somehow involve…
Since all reviews are pigeonholing crosshairs, would it help you if the Futureheads were described as barbershop, post-punk, off-Broadway rock? Probably not. The Futureheads love slipped harmonies and jagged riffs that lurch like tennis shoes tied together, ensconced in playfully soot-boxed production. “Alms” has all the rigid diagonals of a…
These days, Radiohead clones are as pervasive as the Nirvanabes that Jammed the airwaves a decade ago. Although Starfuzz admittedly mines the same cerebral region as Yorke & Co., rather than appearing like it suffers from a bad case of The Bends, the act sounds more like Remy Zero with…
Tequila Mockingbird remains a draw on the local club scene eight years after hatching because it’s reliable and accessible. These qualities are unlikely to catapult the quintet to global fame, but they guarantee that Alien-American, the band’s latest full-length, stays catchy and listenable from start to finish. “The Honeymoon” encapsulates…
Having to replace your frontman sucks. But it’s an even more dicey proposition when the man who previously filled the role is seemingly irreplaceable, universally lauded by both critics and fans. Couple that with the fact that his absence is not the result of irreconcilable differences between bandmates — à…
Given how severely the majority of contemporary country music reeks, who can blame Moot Davis for turning back the clock to a time when the genre smelled like roses? Certainly not Pete Anderson, whose work with Dwight Yoakam has earned him the undying gratitude of listeners who consider the watering…
It takes balls the size of Tasmania to impersonate AC/DC, Australia’s most famed musical export and an undeniable rock-and-roll legend. Uh, that is, unless you’re Seattle’s Hell’s Belles — an all-woman AC/DC tribute band that ably salutes all those about to rock. The band came together four years ago, and…
Long before the noodle-ocity of Phish reigned supreme, there was the Fish Head music of the Radiators. In the tradition of the Funky Meters, Little Feat, Allen Toussaint, Earl King and numerous other talented veterans of the Big Easy scene, the Radz emerged from the bayou in 1978 and have…
Roses Are Red’s Trustkill Records debut, Conversations, comes plastered with a badge that proudly proclaims “ROCK IS BACK.” As embarrassingly hyperbolic as that might seem, the music produced by these five boys from western New York sets out to prove exactly that. While carefully dampened chords, gruff harmonies and impassioned…
The Trouble We’re In, by Milwaukee’s Call Me Lightning, doesn’t open with either a whimper or a bang — just the crackling hum of a crappy, over-cranked amp. But it’s an omen, a stab of static that perfectly sets the tone for the unhinged, neck-snapping mayhem to follow. Formed out…
Ever divine, Miss M is famed for looming larger than life, a powerful persona on stage, screen or in the studio. Through more than thirty years of performing — from playing gay bathhouses, to being signed at her first meeting with the president of Atlantic Records, to countless tours and…
Confusion has been a motif of modern music from Igor Stravinsky on down to Sonic Youth. But rarely has Colorado seen as bizarre an avatar of panic and pandemonium as the Springs’ own Colonial Excess. After a puzzling jumble of handmade EPs leaked out over the past year, the quartet…
It’s a commonly held misconception that America and Europe have cornered the dance-music market. While this may have been true in the scene’s formative years, new sounds and their purveyors have continued to pop up all over the globe. Take Hernan Cattaneo, for instance, who has helped put his native…
It was a couple of years ago, back when his grandfather was still alive. Win Butler and his girlfriend, Régine Chassagne, invited Alvino — Butler called him by his first name — up to their home in Montreal to visit. Alvino had always been close to his grandson, but they’d…
