For the record

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…

Airborne Again

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,…

Weird Al-right

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…

Critical Fatwa

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…

O’Brien Family Band

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

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,…

Old Curtis Street Bar

Kosta Razatos went from trading futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to cooking chiles rellenos at the Old Curtis Street Bar (2100 Curtis Street), and he couldn’t be happier. His father, Pete Razatos, who opened the joint back in 1976, had considered selling the place about a year and half…

Say What?

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,…

Pop Rocks

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…

Let There Be Rock

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…

Hip-Hop Sans Hova

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…

Hip-Hop Trends in 2005

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,…

Heady Metal

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…

Freestyle Fellowship

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,…

Down-Home Delights

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…

Electronic Music

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…

Overlooked in ’05

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…

Diaspora Jammin’

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…

A Pack of Mutts

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…

Rose Hill Drive

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…

Tim Burgess

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…

New Year’s Eve

New Year’s Eve is one of the busiest club nights of the year, with everybody and their mothers celebrating across the city. But the magic doesn’t have to end when the clock strikes two — as long as you can keep yourself entertained for five hours until the after-after-parties start…