Music

Since the breakup of At the Drive-In, fans have blogged relentlessly about which ATDI offshoot should be more acclaimed. The Mars Volta consistently receives high praise for its proggy, experimental rock, while Sparta hasn’t been able to impress critics as easily with its much simpler classic-emo approach. But after two…

Mayday!’s self-titled debut is one of this year’s pleasant surprises. The act (not to be confused with the Saddle Creek outfit of the same name) is the brainchild of producer/keyboardist Plex Luthor and MC Bernbiz. Luthor’s early production work for Miami groups such as Algorithm and Spirit Agent offered simple…

Some of soul’s finest performers specialize in cutting loose; their vocals roar with authority. But just as many of the genre’s talents focus on control, synthesizing their emotions into a smooth confection that makes everything from infidelity to heartbreak taste as sweet as sorbet. John Legend falls into the second…

Sound Bites Aterciopelados, Oye (Nacional Records). Colombia’s Andrea Echeverri and Hector Buitrago ably represent the aural traditions of their homeland even as they offer up grooves and melodies with plenty of appeal for the Americans to their north. Witness “Canción Protesta,” in which Echeverri casts her lot with musical revolutionaries…

With fourteen tracks and a running time of over one hour, Abstract View is a dense and ambitious debut. View (slated for release this Saturday, November 18, at the Oriental Theater) exhibits a particularly straightforward approach to mainstream rock. At times the guitar tones are fuzzed just enough to recall…

By naming themselves Hot IQs, singer/ guitarist Eli Mishkin, bassist/vocalist Bryan Feuchtinger and drummer Elaine Acosta invite analyses of looks and brainpower in addition to music. And if Modifier doesn’t present an argument in favor of their attractiveness (no photos are included), it certainly confirms their smarts. The EP, whose…

Soldiering on without your lead singer is a bold move for any band. Sometimes it really pays off (Faith No More), and other times it totally sucks (everybody else). After an emotionally and musically complex 2004 math-metal debut, Of Malice and the Magnum Heart, Misery Signals’ hardcore-influenced singer, Jesse Zalaska,…

Whether Lee “Scratch” Perry got his nickname through some association with the Devil or because he’s well known for being more than a little crazy and likely to lash out like a feral cat is up for debate. Regardless, that ornery disposition may be the reason he’s outlived almost all…

When the punk genre was young and pissy, no self-respecting group would have chosen the moniker Cute Is What We Aim For. Disgusted Is What We Aim For, perhaps, or maybe Covered In Spit Is What We Aim For. But “cute”? “Cute” is among the many things old-school punks despised…

Tom Heinl’s music is either inspired kitsch or demented satire. Like Gene and Dean Ween (a pair of admirable oddballs to whom he’s often compared) on their 12 Country Greats album, Heinl takes a twisted approach to classic country. An offbeat mixture of Hank Sr., Tom Waits and campy lounge…

There’s a certain breed of genuine female singer-songwriter — think Jolie Holland, Cat Power and Neko Case — that offers a quiet, insistent counterweight to all the high-exposure booty-shaking that dominates the vapid wasteland of the mainstream airwaves. Add Tara Jane O’Neil to that list. A damaged waif whose soft,…

Piece Of Shit. Product Of Society. Pissed Off Stef. Regardless of what the letters stand for, Stefon Leron Alexander stands for emotive rhymes, inventive beats and the uniquely self-effacing rap of the Twin Cities. P.O.S. began his musical career with Minneapolis punks Cadillac Blindside and Building Better Bombs, but it…

Till the Sun Turns Black, Ray LaMontagne’s latest, doesn’t voyage into new musical territory. The songs draw from traditional sources such as blues, folk and R&B, using familiar instrumentation (acoustic guitars, strings, brass) to underpin and augment LaMontagne’s scratchy voice. Nevertheless, this simplicity only amplifies the impact of the songs,…

The men of Johnny Knows Karate (due at the Larimer Lounge on Monday, November 20) cite the calculatedly offensive Hate Fuck Trio as an influence (perhaps it’s the Evergreen connection). But rather than going even further to establish their local punk cred by, say, covering a hilariously disturbing Frantix song,…

“Hard work. Sweat equity. Pounding the pavement. Making connections.” The opening lines of Love.45’s bio might as well be the band’s manifesto. Two years ago, the act issued its self-titled debut on Rock Ridge Music, the imprint co-owned by 3 Doors Down guitarist Chris Henderson. Love.45 was brimming with at…

Jamie Lidell is the sort of person your grandmother might lovingly call a “character,” someone whose eccentricity and intelligence come perilously and gloriously close to madness. In a single sitting, the 33-year-old British singer/DJ/composer goes from discussing Nazism to the importance of stage confidence in a kind of lightning-strike stream…

Ben Lee used to be known as that kid from Noise Addict. Then he was known as Claire Danes’s boyfriend (and then as Danes’s ex). These days he’s just Ben again, a pop bard from Bondi, Australia, who’s touring his ass off and churning out pop numbers that are as…

During one fateful blizzard in Columbus, Ohio, when a band that was scheduled to play a party got stranded, brothers Gil and Donny Mantera (aka Ultimate Donny) valiantly stepped on stage and improvised some sort of drunken experiment that involved the two “acting like the biggest idiots.” The crowd was…

During concerts staged shortly after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, folk icon Joan Baez regularly launched into anti-war rhetoric, to the profound displeasure of many attendees. “A big number would walk out,” she recalls. “I kind of go by my merch man, who sees everybody come and go, and…

With a handful of underwhelming solo records and the drawn-out demise of Son Volt, Jay Farrar’s last half-decade has been awfully uninspired — just song after song cut from the same dreary fabric that has resulted in so much monotonous blue-collar alt-country. Gob Iron, Farrar’s venture with Aders Parker, is…

Ben Folds plays the ivory keys like an eleven-fingered man suckled on Elton John records. The former frontman and namesake of the Ben Folds Five has a clamant, albeit sometimes goofy, presence and an overwhelming talent that at times makes it hard to distinguish his solo work from his group…