Music

There is only one Freddie Mercury, and there will never be another performer like him — but Gary Mullen is an excellent reminder of why and how Queen changed the landscape of modern music forever. Along with his band, The Works, Mullen brings Mercury and company’s epic existence back to…

The Backbeat flag is flying at half staff today. In case you haven’t heard, services for Rick Kulwicki, the legendary Fluid guitarist who passed away last week, are being held at Fairmount Cemetery (430 South Quebec Street) this morning at 10 a.m., with a viewing taking place at 9 a.m…

Every year, a new group of artists and acts makes its way to the head of the class. Some are more advanced than others; they’ve been steadily building their names at shows, creating a healthy buzz. Others have been toiling in virtual obscurity, holed up in basements or apartments, driven…

Miracleman started life as the British Captain Marvel in the 1950s. But he got a makeover in the early 1980s when he benefited from the brilliantly dark imagination of Alan Moore. Later, Neil Gaiman picked up where Moore left off and imbued the series with his own genius for the…

You could be excused for thinking every metal band out of L.A. did its time on the Sunset Strip. Thankfully, Elitist is too young for all that nonsense and isn’t really made from the same stuff anyway. Sounding like a true alloy of crust punk, hardcore and death metal, Elitist…

With vocals that sound like an evil, croaking frog over a torrent of percussion and an assault of guitars, and with a bass that has dynamics not unlike nests of churning mutant wasps, Immortal helped to define the sound and aesthetics of Norwegian black metal from its earliest days. While…

Linkin Park, once a cautionary tale on how rap rock could go wrong, reinvented itself with last year’s A Thousand Suns. The reinvention garnered Radiohead and Pink Floyd comparisons, and, maybe even more amazingly, that’s what the guys were going for. Whether it qualifies as daring to mine either band…

“Boo” starts this odd collection of ambient tracks from David Britton with what sounds like mechanical cicadas in the distance under the strains of a ukulele treated with an effect to sharpen its tone while trying to find a melody. Each song is an exercise in drones both ambient and…

After releasing more than a dozen albums with smaller ensembles, saxophonist Fred Hess released his first big-band recording, Hold On, in 2009. While Hold On represented Hess’s love for the big bands of the 1950s, it also had some forward-thinking moments. Hess and company push the envelope even further with…

With Trealyph 3, Babah Fly aims for the fundamental hip-hop lover in us. He’s a true creative master and has an obvious ear for beats and production, and those are the things that end up standing out the most. Although Fly has a unique flow, he doesn’t have the strongest…

From the way the first cut, “Cherry on Top,” opens, it’s pretty clear that Tantric Picasso’s Life’s a Bitch and Then You Die So Why Not Laugh Until You Cry is going to be a bizarre journey. Layers of indecipherable voices over a swinging beat and walking bass line soon…

After starting Abe Vigoda in high school, Michael Vidal and Juan Velazquez took their fledgling project and unintentionally helped spawn the so-called “tropical punk-rock” genre. The band’s joyous live shows and reverb-drenched guitar sound — which is part surf rock, part psychedelic and part noisy punk, among other things —…

Originality is a tough sell. People tend to like the things they already like, because the idea of new is foreign and scary and seems poised to usher in a depraved era of dogs and cats living together, which would be immoral. “Can’t understand it?” MF Doom once rhetorically asked…

You can’t have a discussion about tribal house without mentioning Dubtribe Sound System — the outfit hailing from San Francisco and comprising Sunshine and Moonbeam Jones — which achieved mainstream crossover success with Bryant Street in 1999. Best known for such tracks as “Do It Now,” “Sunshine’s Theme” and “Mother…

As a rare drummer and frontwoman, Dee Dee Penny (aka Kristin Gundred) was part of experimental pop band Grand Ole Party. Once that band split, Gundred took it upon herself to learn how to write songs on an instrument well outside her comfort zone. When that experiment seemed to work…