Dir en Grey appears to be filling the Rammstein slot on this year’s Family Values tour as the super-visual, non-English-singing band that wins the crowd over through sheer live intensity. Although its new disc, Withering to Death, marks its American debut, the Japanese group has actually been around for a…
Anyone who grew up in the ’80s remembers the original Nintendo video-game system. Equally memorable was some of the unusual and inventive music written by programmers for the different levels in each game. With all things retro coming back into vogue in bizarre ways, it should come as no surprise…
There aren’t many rock bands led by drummers, for obvious reasons; most listeners prize melody above percussion, even though beats are primarily responsible for getting them off their cans. Nevertheless, timekeeper Damon Che’s primacy in the math-metal instrumental outfit Don Caballero makes perfect sense, because his playing provides the tricky…
Aggressive, obnoxious and frequently unlistenable, the music of Salt Lake City’s Agape is also often dangerously danceable, hypnotically seductive and pleasantly disorienting. The experience of an Agape show lies somewhere between the scrotum-shrinking rush of jumping out of an airplane and the exquisitely unendurable pain of being trampled by a…
There are few bands these days that can claim to be truly hardcore. In an era of post-this, emo and screamo that — not to mention the gaggle of other offshoot styles — there’s a scant number of groups who genuinely understand the origins and embody the simplistic essence of…
Dameon Merkl is a dangerously funny man with a penchant for inspired self-deprecation and Bukowski-esque aphorisms. Get him behind the mike with his band, however, and he’s as menacing and spooky as a walk through Lafayette Cemetery on a moonless summer night. Led by Merkl, Bad Luck City — made…
These days, so many house DJs and producers are indistinguishable from one another. That’s probably because most of them are trying to emulate Chicago’s DJ Sneak and his counterparts, who were at the vanguard of the Windy City’s nascent house scene in the mid-’90s. Looking back to disco melodies and…
Steve Henrickson would be proud of his kid sister. If he could hear the stunningly evocative singer-songwriter she’s become, he’d recognize that she’s somehow overcome that dark day in September 1991 when he took his own life. He’d see that she’s channeled all the heartache of her 26 years into…
Aubrey Collins is relieved. At least that’s what I’m guessing, since I haven’t been able to speak with the affable chanteuse since her elimination last week from The One: Making a Music Star. While I’m sure Collins would like to weigh in about her time at the prime-time academy, ABC…
In his coverage of Austin’s South by Southwest Music festival, Rolling Stone tastemaker David Fricke called the Texas-based Riverboat Gamblers “the best band without a major-label deal at SXSW ’06.” Raves like this have spawned music-industry feeding frenzies in the past, but Mike Wiebe, the Gamblers’ lead singer, says his…
The Unseen isn’t adding anything new to the punk idiom. It’s all been said and done before: Our president is the embodiment of evil; corporate avarice is killing the world; we’re going to hell in an oil- and blood-soaked hand basket. Thing is, though, unlike the current batch of punk…
“Form another pyramid, look how we slid/All over Park Hill, Stapleton politic/On a twenty-dollar bill all in it together/You can’t fuck with this stormy weather, yaknahmean?” Indeed we do, Mr. Cappadonna, indeed we do. And similarly, when your Wu-Tang Clan protégé Masta Killa tells us that “It’s Brooklawn day, Pinkhouse…
Eschewing the discrete, alternating rock and alt-country interchanges of 2003’s Lovers, the Sleepy Jackson takes a mumbling drunk swing at “All Things Must Pass,” with a few glammy deflations of “God Only Knows” thrown in for kicks. Led by blandly interlocking harmonies and absentminded acoustic thrums, Jackson’s songs wind up…
White Whale doesn’t quite qualify as an indie supergroup, but members of the combo have some noteworthy credentials: guitarist/vocalist Matt Suggs previously performed with Butterglory, bassist Rob Pope was one of the Get Up Kids, and so on. Their know-how informs WWI, an uncommonly accomplished debut with a minimum of…
Apparently this album is some treacherous betrayal (not the first, mind you) of an aborted three-year-old project featuring legendary underground New York rapper Kool Keith, a onetime Bellevue psych-hospital patient and “pornocore” pioneer. Rumor has it that a dastardly country label gained control of Keith’s lyrics and backtracked them with…
From the opening bars of Sweater Club’s debut full-length, it’s clear that something unique is going on. While a power trio melding rock, punk and reggae isn’t exactly new — heck, the Police did that — the addition of a three-piece brass section (trumpet, trombone and sax) gives this Oregon…
The utter conviction and stark yet fiery edges of Bright Channel’s music contrast sharply with the swirling, drifting, ethereal sound of Volplane, the previous project of Jeff Suthers and Shannon Stein. From 1997 to 1999, prior to forming Bright Channel, the duo wrote atmospheric music on par with the shoegazers…
Ms. Rose is an accomplished actress, with experience on stage and screen. Yet she’s also an admirable vocalist who’s done a lot of stylistic maturing since her days in Sympathy F, a memorable ’90s band that temporarily turned her into a rocker. Act II, whose release will be celebrated on…
Azam Ali, Elysium for the Brave (Six Degrees Records). If Condoleezza Rice really wants to solve the current Middle East crisis, here’s an idea: Position a loudspeaker on the border of Israel and Lebanon and set Azam Ali’s latest on infinite repeat. If Elysium’s transcendent music and Ali’s angelic voice…
Of all the labels to be unfairly saddled with, the oxymoronic “Christian punk” tag has dogged this Pacific Northwest trio for more than a decade. Sure, these fine, not-so-young lads don’t spew expletives like hard-core legend Black Flag, nor do they wallow in sexual depravity like punk godfather Iggy Pop,…
Nearly every critique of Keane’s new album, Under the Iron Sea, sports comparisons to the same two or three earnest, melodic, big-selling Euro-bands. In many respects, the ubiquity of these references signifies a failure of imagination on the part of the music-reviewing community (big, fat surprise). Nevertheless, a listen to…
Bronx native Jason Kibler, aka DJ Logic, got his start spinning records at local community events in the ’80s, where he quickly attracted the attention of Living Colour’s Vernon Reid and a cast of others with his hip-hop and jazz-inflected beats. Logic has since added his signature grooves to hundreds…
