It’s always darkest before the dawn. Or so the music industry has been reassuring itself lately. You really can’t blame record companies for that whiff of optimism: Over the past few years, they’ve been bleeding like a hemophiliac with a razor fetish. The numbers are indeed grim. SoundScan figures for…
The music business as we know it is dying. And as I witness its continued collapse, it’s gratifying to see a shift in the balance of power. For once, artists actually have some leverage, and it’s about damn time. If you ask me, the tail has been wagging the dog…
Recordings by the Mars Volta are almost always accompanied by extensive backstories. For instance, 2003’s De-Loused in the Comatorium was inspired by the late artist Julio Venegas, who jumped to his doom from an El Paso overpass, while 2005’s Frances the Mute reportedly sprang from the pages of a diary…
Last year, the sales of hip-hop albums dropped 30 percent, a figure that includes digital downloads. But going by recent rap lyrics, you’d think the average MC was too rich to stand up. Literally. Fat Joe’s latest single, “The Crackhouse,” begins, “I’m sleeping on a billion dollars.” Bear in mind…
George Inai is like “a Model T built by Toyota in a Mexican factory.” At least that’s the closest the singer-songwriter says he has come to describing his unique cross-cultural blend of gothic Americana and Mexican folk music. “I think the Japanese culture tends to take other ideas and pull…
True to its title, the latest album from Stephin Merritt’s long-running prickly pop project the Magnetic Fields is full of feedback and reverb. While it might seem that such sonic intrusion would disrupt these carefully crafted tunes, that’s not the case. In fact, Distortion is as pretty, melodic and fully…
The departure of a performer as strong as Jason Isbell, who went solo last year, would cripple most bands — but not Drive-By Truckers. The group has rolled on for a decade-plus despite personnel changes because songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley continue to share shifts behind the wheel. Thanks…
All too often, when bands try to splice together musical styles, they forget to develop their own identity within their songwriting. Or, more important, they forget to write music that anyone with anything beyond a rudimentary level of artistic discernment would ever want to listen to. With that in mind,…
The music on Out of Harm’s Way isn’t just all over the map — the CD sports enough twists and turns for an entire atlas. But if singer-songwriter Nicole Torres’s feverish eclecticism makes for an inconsistent listening experience, her meanderings are never less than interesting, and her best moments are…
Bear Hands, Golden EP (Freedom in Exile). With ironic wit, cautious optimism and plenty of nostalgic glances over the shoulder to the early ’90s, this Brooklyn quartet hits the ground running with an irresistibly catchy and endearing EP. It’s amazing that New York hasn’t run out of practice spaces for…
In addition to being a renowned jazz artist, bassist Christian McBride is an in-demand sideman who’s proven his mettle in a slew of styles. The thirty-something’s resumé includes performances or recordings with popsters such as Carly Simon, funkateers like James Brown and hip-hop artists exemplified by ?uestlove of the Roots…
Normally, when a bunch of Crescent City all-stars such as Russell Batiste from the Funky Meters and Papa Mali and Big Chief Monk Boudreaux of the Wild Magnolias get together with the likes of Page McConnell from Phish and Reed Mathis from Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, you can expect one…
“We are Maggie and Terre and Suzzy/Maggie and Terre and Suzzy Roche” sang the Roches on the opening track of their acclaimed 1979 debut. “Sometimes our voices give out,” the sisters continue, “but not our ages and our phone numbers.” While this bit of lyrical tomfoolery held a certain degree…
When beatboxing emerged in the early days of hip-hop, it probably came across to many as a cute novelty. From the Fat Boys to actor Michael Winslow, the notion of vocal percussion seemed more funny than cool. Rahzel grew up going to see his cousin, who just happened to be…
On his latest disc, Carnival Vol. II: Memoirs of an Immigrant, onetime Fugee Wyclef Jean takes his reputation as the king of collaborators beyond the logical extreme. He sees his music as a tent large enough to cover performers of every stripe — a worthy ideal. Yet the guest stars…
With unhinged twanginess, unabashed spaciness and unapologetic snottiness, deadbubbles plays raunchy, raucous rock and roll that exists out of time. The Broomfield-based outfit’s psychedelic rhythm-and-blues-a-billy seethes, surges and snarls as it spans the rock decades, comprising the rhythmic romp of the Crickets, the sassy swagger of the Yardbirds and the…
When the machines finally take over and wipe humanity off the face of the Earth, they won’t have much use for our music, but the work of Falko Brock-sieper will live on. His clean, efficient, minimal techno creations might be one of the few things that make our cold robot…
The shots that rang out in LoDo last November, killing one and injuring six, had a lasting effect on Hush (1403 Larimer Street), the club a few blocks away where the shooter and his victims had been earlier in the evening. “In my professional opinion, we handled that situation very…
Alright, I’m as positive as Jamie Lynn Spear’s pregnancy test that tix for this thing are going to be gone quicker than a free flat screen on Craigslist, but I figured I’d put it out there for you just in case the Fray isn’t one of your friends on MySpace,…
Some big-name rock stars were expected to receive music-related Academy Award nominations on January 22, including Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, the man behind the astonishing score for Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, and Eddie Vedder, who composed original songs for the Sean Penn-helmed flick Into the Wild. However,…
At one point during the following interview, conducted for a profile of the Mars Volta that appears in the January 24 Westword, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, the band’s vocalist, lyricist and frontman, casually mentions his “old habits” with “drug use.” After perusing the entire Q&A, readers will understand precisely what he means,…
Here’s a selection of the best of last week’s music blogging from around the Village Voice chain: Glorification of violence, misogyny and lots of angry white kids all figure prominently in this Necro review…
