Music

Approximately 67,518 discs were issued in 2005. Of the thousands I managed to listen to, fewer than fifty truly moved me — but among those, I kept coming back to the following albums: The Mars Volta, Frances the Mute (GSL/Universal). When the Mars Volta played before an intimate crowd at…

Planes Mistaken for Stars is dead sexy. Never mind the unwashed hair and tattered jeans or the unkempt beards and the dirt under their fingernails; on stage, the act’s animal instinct rivals the pretty-boy posturing of other groups and looks every bit as good. Some may mistake Planes for emo,…

At first glance, Little Fyodor is a total fucking wack job. On second glance, he’s still pretty much a wack job. On third glance, however, you might start to discern a certain complexity, eloquence and even sanity at the core of his spastic and mangled songcraft. Sitting down with his…

All hail Slayer! The monstrous sound of Reign in Blood inspires to this day. Unfortunately, much of what it inspires is adolescent claptrap like the majority of death metal. Even though most fans of this “scariest” form of music are pimply dipwads, every once in a while the music attracts…

Music hasn’t always been a commodity. Long ago, it was a more collective and intimate art form played with friends, neighbors and relatives — a tradition that the O’Brien Family Band keeps alive and kicking. Comprising father Dan on guitar, mother Janette on bass and kids Maura and Kyle on…

Adam Freeland has a knack for reinventing himself. The main man behind the nu-skool breaks movement of the mid-’90s, Freeland, who’s also remixed tunes by such acts as Nirvana and the White Stripes, has helped bring rock and roll back to the dance scene. Taking that aesthetic a step further,…

As Curtis Armstrong’s Miles tells Tom Cruise’s Joel in the 1983 smash-hit comedy Risky Business, sometimes you just gotta say, “What the fuck.” In Joel’s case, this phrase is employed with a shrug of the shoulders and a sly smile: “What the fuck — let’s go for it.” In mine,…

In 2005, pop music was rock music. Between Kelly Clarkson’s tarted-up “Since U Been Gone,” Ashlee Simpson’s raspy, Courtney-Love-after-a-bender vocals and Hilary Duff’s collabs with her Good Charlotte boy toy Joel Madden, even the biggest Top 40 starlets liked their guitars cranked up to a sassy eleven. Elsewhere, rockers in…

My undying love for Dudes With Guitars Who Think Way Too Much About Girls is now a critical liability, as Rockism has recently become grounds for public execution. I can only hope my final hours (before I am personally decapitated by Missy Elliott) are as graceful, poignant and unabashedly melodramatic…

If hip-hop had a theme song in 2005, it wasn’t “Gold Digger” or “Lose Control” or “Candy Shop,” or any tune that contained Mike Jones’s phone number. Instead, it was that old standard by the Original Rapper himself, Lou Reed: “I’m Waiting for the Man” — the man in this…

On the surface, 2005 was another banner year for hip-hop. There were at least a couple of classic albums (Beanie Sigel’s The B. Coming and Kanye West’s Late Registration) and a slew of great ones (Madlib’s The Further Adventures of Lord Quas, Young Jeezy’s Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101,…

When it comes to heavy metal, 2005 will be remembered as the year the promising Sounds of the Underground tour debuted, metalcore dominated the scene popularity-wise, and Iron Maiden got egged at Ozzfest. There weren’t a lot of big hits (only nü-metal holdovers Disturbed and Mudvayne cracked the Billboard Top…

So barefoot-boogie hippies rub you the wrong way. Or maybe you’re more open-minded than the typical cranky-pants, scene-sucking elitist. Either way, hopefully you’re savvy enough to realize that shortcut labels like “jam band” and “indie rock” better describe a band’s business approach and fan base than its sound. This year,…

In 2005, Nashville hunks-in-arms like Toby Keith tuned down their jingoist jingles, the Muzik Mafia treaded water, and most of alt-country’s best contenders simply looked back. But as these ten albums from country’s mainstream and underground demonstrate, such quiet scenes were still full of ferment beneath the surface. Only the…

While hip-hop continued to get mo’ live in ’05, and indie rock further honed post-punk/emo’s affectations into something more genuinely affecting, the arch-paradigms from the last twelve months of electronic composition seemed more concerned with looking in than locking in. For the most part, top producers haven’t seemed as worried…

Listening to every single thing that comes across my desk is by and large a painful, if not soul-killing, experience, but occasionally a few diamonds land in my lap that wouldn’t get there any other way. Although most of these CDs are by artists you’ve probably never heard of (I…

2005 was a year of exploration and expansion in urban music. Against a Matrix-like background of corporate-controlled radio and TV, iPod-enabled consumers demanded more musical choices and were rewarded by indie labels that stepped in to provide an alternative to mainstream mediocrity once again. For every lackluster commercial effort (like…

As far as music goes, I am not a tribal person. I am not prodded by Pitchfork, nor narcotized by Relix, nor are my spirits lifted by No Depression. Not to say that those media sources are entirely flawed — indeed, each has its virtues. But each of these influential…

According to Rose Hill Drive drummer Nate Barnes, someone at the Boulder Theater suggested that, during its Friday, December 30, show at the venue, the band reinterpret a classic album in its entirety as a precursor to a set of original material. And once the idea was hatched, there was…

Led by Tim Burgess, the Charlatans UK were one of the key acts to help resurrect British rock during the Madchester craze of the early ’90s. Their jangly blend of psychedelic rock and dance beats was unique (not to mention catchy as hell), setting them apart from the majority of…