Music

Since I’m a music critic, all anyone ever wants to talk to me about is music. Which is usually fine: As luck would have it, music happens to be my favorite subject. But every now and then, someone insists on pushing my buttons, extolling the virtues of the Grateful Dead…

Cello plus drums and screams: How can you go wrong? Especially if you’re the Portland duo known as Discharge Information System, who perform on Wednesday, October 29, at Revoluciones (719 West Eighth Avenue), with the May Riots and Nightshark. Andy Gehrz pilots the traps and Melissa Collins scrapes the catgut…

Having more in common with Buzz Ozbourne than Buzz Aldrin, the New Ancient Astronauts boldly go where free jazz bares its fangs. Working from the bedrock of brooding hardcore, these adventurous space sailors — sax skronker Aaron Schilling, guitarist Kasey Elkington, bassist Don White and drummer Anthony Bell — don’t…

There’s a fine line between myth-making and fucking around. Tons of rock bands throughout history have been as good, if not better, at playing the image game than they have been at playing their instruments. The Clash, by a barrage of astute media manipulation, was able to downplay the fact…

It’s 1979. A little boy is curled up, warm and fast asleep in his suburban Washington home. It’s a school day, so he’ll have to wake up soon, but for now, he’s breathing slowly and shallowly, safe in a dream. It’s 6 a.m. Suddenly, an unreasonably loud piano and a…

During its longest period between albums, Ween has endured one emotional jolt after another: Touring drummer extraordinaire Claude Coleman survived a near-fatal car accident, uninsured; the band got more attention for a commissioned but never aired Pizza Hut jingle called “Where’d the Cheese Go?” than for releasing any backlogged collectibles;…

Supergroups are every record label’s dream. Take a handful of proven artists and bundle them into a single package, and it’s bound to be a runaway success. Such a scenario is surely what prompted record execs to suggest that Pete Droge, Shawn Mullins and Matthew Sweet take a stab at…

In 1997, shortly after concluding a tour in support of their biggest-selling album, Roots, Sepultura and frontman Max Cavalera unexpectedly split under acrimonious circumstances. Even more unforeseen was the announcement by the rest of the band’s members — including Max’s younger brother, drummer Igor — that they would continue without…

Unlike standard retro-rockers bent on filling clubs with rehashed vintage fashion, the three Followill brothers and one Followill cousin are as real as the shaggy hair on their heads. The Kings of Leon are fluent in several styles of circa-1970 rock. These influences go from their sleeves into the pot,…

DJ Josh Ivy must feel like walking into traffic right about now. Less than a month after his insanely popular GROWednesdays was handed its walking papers by Harry’s (The Beatdown, September 25), his reign at Rise ended. When GROWednesdays went dark, Ivy was bummed but optimistic, confident that he’d find…

The next time the sky cracks open and hails bloody murder, conjure up heavenly angels spitting over the rail. That’s something Ed Hamell is good at doing. A brutally frank songwriter from Syracuse, New York, the narrative-based guitar slinger works exclusively from a jet-black palette — imagining, for example, the…

Mishka Shubaly is staggering home. The singer-songwriter wrote his first tunes while living in a Colorado basement, where his blissfully black sense of humor helped him handle a hard-knock life and the stigma of clothes that smelled like pickles. (He kept his duds in pickle jars from his job at…

It’s a muggy August night in Omaha, and outside the weathered Sokol Auditorium, kids line the sidewalk like a string of firecrackers waiting to go off. It’s kind of a weird setting for a big rock show: a snoozing residential neighborhood full of gas stations, dusty signs and weeds poking…

Most stoner-rock bands draw from the same template: Black Sabbath. Kyuss. The Melvins. But when Puny Human constructs its songs, instead of consulting the gospels of St. Iommi and First Josh, the band’s members summon divine inspiration from an entirely different book: St. Mark. Farner, that is. “The thing about…

For years, Me’Shell NdegéOcello (her surname means “free as a bird” in Swahili) has consistently produced a prodigious amount of seductive, sensual and, at times, subversive soul music that has never translated into multi-platinum record sales. And despite several Grammy nominations and a plethora of critical accolades, the closest she’s…

As many of you bad boys and girls know from personal experience, history lessons can be tedious — but not My Dad’s a Fuckin’ Alcoholic. A compilation assembled by the Australian label Afterburn, the disc offers a wild trip back in time with the Frantix, a band whose role in…

Geez, aren’t you supposed to lighten up as you get older? Love Me Destroyer is the new incarnation of Pinhead Circus, the much-loved outfit that spent ten years belting out its brand of catchy, heartfelt punk rock. But where Pinhead Circus once cast a youthful, almost happy-go-lucky glow on its…

Semifreak’s fans have been jonesing for their 8 O’Clock Fix, the debut disc long delayed on its road to release. Entering the studio as “Man in the Shade,” the group encountered creative differences between original bassist Chad Williams and its other members, leading to Williams’s exodus in early 2002 and…

I’m all about the music; I have no time for the bullshit that often goes along with it. I learned early on to just listen and to disregard everything else. So when someone tries to sell me on a band’s look, angle or image, he might as well be speaking…

Who’d have thought that a band like the Clash would ever make it to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? True, Joe Strummer and company did flirt with the mainstream a bit, but even in today’s climate of punk patronization, it seems creepy to lump the group that wrote…