Back in Pearl Jam’s ’90s heyday, frontman Eddie Vedder eschewed the machinery of the music industry; he refused to make videos, conduct interviews or participate in commonplace publicity chores that are on the to-do lists of virtually every successful pop performer. But when the Jammers’ CDs stopped selling in big…
The most impressive thing about Cowboy Troy is what it took to make a black country rapper feasible. Hip-hop, the great assimilationist art, had to become the dominant musical form. A long line of experiments, from Charlie Daniels’s spoken-word songs to Timbaland’s hoedowns with Bubba Sparxxx, had to lay the…
Like a pissed-off, mistreated dog, Travis Reilly yelps, “This is how downward spirals start!” Then he growls, “This is a convoluted attempt to find some source of hope.” Later, he barks, “This is the best and worst things will ever get.” Reilly’s Long Island-based hardcore outfit, This Is Hell, seems…
The side project/obsession of KMFDM collaborator Raymond Watts, PIG has long been a hero in the underground industrial scene. The band’s mix of orchestral drenched beats, references to pork products and proclivity for poking fun at its peers has made it a favorite with the Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch…
Jamey Jasta makes an affable host for MTV2’s Headbangers Ball, sucking up to guest bands exactly the way viewers almost surely would in his place. On stage and on record with Hatebreed, he’s an equally perfect metalcore frontman. Indeed, he might have been grown in a vat for precisely that…
He’s baaaack! Except for sporadic performances with the hip-hop combo Dos Locos, Chris Dellinger has kept a low musical profile since his last outfit, Blister 66, became worm food. So what’s the dude been doing? Besides slowly destroying his liver (all the times I’ve run into the charismatic frontman over…
DJ Icey’s lengthy career is a testament to the staying power of electronic music. Icey has operated as Orlando’s breakbeat ambassador for nearly two decades and shows no sign of letting up. Never letting trends dictate his style or approach, the DJ has remained true to the breakbeats since day…
As recently as two or three years ago, when myspace.com couldn’t get a prom date and music blogs were still breastfeeding, if independent rock bands ever hoped to reach a national (or even regional) audience, they had to do it the old-fashioned way — by touring their asses off, earning…
When I was growing up, my folks would take me to a restaurant called the Royal Fork. It was a smorgasbord — or borgasmorg, as my dad called it — and definitely a godsend for a portly kid like yours truly. My parents just had to shell out a meager…
Gretchen Wilson’s famous red neck is fine, but the rest of her is a mess. In May, Wilson wiped out on an ATV, and during the next couple of shows, she recalls, “it was pretty difficult to breathe — not sing, but breathe. So I told my tour manager, ‘Why…
For record labels, video games and music are a match made in target-demographic heaven. EA Sports pushes major-label names in rock and hip-hop on the company’s yearly Madden and NBA updates, and Tony Hawk games sport underground punk and metal soundtracks. While those are somewhat appropriate, the latest music-in-games development…
All over the map stylistically, the Sound of Urchin boasts dual stunt guitarists, à la Slayer, and champions cheesy hair metal, sugary pop, screeching thrash and classic rock. Frontman/drummer Tomato, bassist Doo Doo and axmen B-ill and Seahag might collectively worship at the altar of Thin Lizzy, but they’re equally…
The music industry takes forever to change direction or regain lost momentum — hence the release of back-to-rock CDs like this one a year or two after the trend peaked. If Be Your Own Pet’s latest seems doomed to commercial failure, however, the disc is more than lively enough to…
“Men and mascara always run,” sings South Carolina-born Julie Roberts on the title track of this followup to her superb 2004 self-titled debut. One doubts that the 27-year-old stunner has endured many such problems, but she delivers the tune’s hard-earned pearl of wisdom with a tone that’s rich, resonant and…
Hot Chip seems perfectly crafted for the daily hype-fire that is the blogosphere: tea-party Timbaland rhythms, cute French boys and vocals that vary from fey to frigid falsetto. But while the band packages well, it sounds like New Order in its pajamas turning Prince into a club-drugged handbell choir. The…
Alejandro Escovedo hasn’t had it easy: His first wife committed suicide; his excellent, critically praised discs haven’t set any charts afire; and he battled a recent bout of hepatitis without the support of health insurance. So you might expect his first release since 2002’s By the Hand of the Father…
“Polished” and “punk” are musical adjectives that don’t always mix. Buff away the rough edges from good punk, and you can easily end up with soulless quasi-pop. It takes a lot of care to produce aesthetically pleasing punk without sacrificing its unkempt side, but the Agency pulls it off nicely…
The one thing in short supply in good roadhouse music is humor. But there’s no such lack on the debut CD from local twang-bangers the Calf Branders. The boys open Good Enuff!? with their very own theme song, which pays tribute to everything from the group’s infrequent rehearsals to its…
Barry Adamson, Stranger on the Sofa (Central Control). Ex-Magazine/Bad Seed bassist turned composer Barry Adamson aborts much of the film-noir-inspired aesthetic that made 1989’s paranoid masterpiece Moss Side Story the template for every U.K. trip-hop outfit from Portishead to Tricky. Still evoking movies of the mind, Adamson juggles jazz, spoken…
If you’ve been racing down local dirt roads in your pickup, jamming to Toby Keith or Gretchen Wilson, then you should probably skip this week’s Hank III concert. Plastering a Confederate flag in your back window might buy you a redneck pass (and hopefully a good ass-whuppin’), but it doesn’t…
Way back in 1973, Rolling Stone ran a cover story declaring that the Grateful Dead had become “corporate.” Indeed, over the years, the Dead and its extended family became a massive financial juggernaut — even if the members of the group essentially remained filthy hippies. And suffice it to say…
There’s a right way and a wrong way to add violin to a rock band, and if you put Oakland’s Heavenly States to the test, they’d surely pass. For one thing, violinist Genevieve Gagon mixes things up with piano and synthesizer on many of the songs, but the fact that…
