Concerts

Dankside Entertainment boss B-Blacc is steadily getting heads ready for his new album, Blacc the Ripper, due out this summer. The first single, “Clap,” has been making its way around the internet and this week, Blacc dropped the video. Taking on the persona of his “Blacc the Ripper” character, the…

“I promised the band that I would stay sober for this interview,” declares Houses frontman Andy Hamilton before taking a gentle pull off a glass of ice and whiskey. “Now that you’re here, I guess I can start drinking.” For the moment, Hamilton seems relaxed in the comfort of the…

Back in 1981, a camp counselor convinced me that disco sucked and finally weaned me off the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. That was the same year that Mötley Crüe released its debut album, Too Fast for Love, but it took me a while to warm to hair metal. First an…

Jeez, man, leave a few bands off the Westword Music Showcase ballot, and suddenly the hordes show up outside your window with pitchforks and torches, calling for your dismemberment. “I have a question,” wrote one especially disgruntled gent in response to a post on the Backbeat blog in which I…

While Vivid Imagination is probably ancient history to most, bandmates Mike Buckley and Ben Williams went on to play in the more-familiar Nightshark (Buckley) and Ghost Buffalo (Williams). But back in the early ’90s, when these guys were punk teenagers, they realized a dream by opening for the infamous and…

Though his name may not be as recognizable as those of top-level superstar DJs, among house-music cognoscenti, Mr. V has plenty of cachet. But even if you’ve never heard of him, the most cursory listen to his smooth blend of deep, soulful house music will illuminate his abilities behind the…

Elin Palmer has spent a great deal of her career playing a supporting role, adding majestic violin textures to the music of some this town’s most critically revered acts, including the Czars, 16 Horsepower, DeVotchKa, Wovenhand and Munly and the Lee Lewis Harlots, as well as performing and guesting on…

Originally hailing from North Carolina, the members of Future Islands have come to call Baltimore their home in the last year. The band brought its energized live performances and native enthusiasm to that city’s rich underground music scene. Future Island’s sound features heavy rhythms mixed with dark atmospheres and powerfully…

The only thing delicate about the band called Crystal Antlers is its name — and then only just. The music on Tentacles, the first full-length by these Long Beach, California, noisemakers, is raucous and sloppy, a joyously chaotic mélange that maintains a sense of tension because it always seems on…

Although Richard Buckner has lived on both coasts and in Canada, the singer-songwriter sounds like he’s spent a lot of time in the South and in America’s heartland. On 1998’s Since, for example, he sings with a deep twang that’s more Texas than Bay Area or Brooklyn. On all of…

In 1970, Gil Scott-Heron became one of the godfathers of hip-hop with the release of his debut album, Small Talk at 125th & Lenox. His playful wit and incisive rhetoric developed more fully on later releases such as Pieces of a Man and Winter in America, establishing him as a…

The goal of this youthful Brooklyn trio, appearing alongside the Pseudo Dates and Eyes and Ears, probably wasn’t to push the buttons of most male rock critics — but they’ve managed to do so anyhow for three important reasons. First, the Girls are all girls, with no male members to…

The noise- and experimental-rock scene in Vancouver, British Columbia, seems to produce bands with a flavor distinct from that of their American cousins. Two things that unite them, however, are a palpable grittiness and a fearless use of disparate elements to create an often disturbingly, always startlingly compelling sound. Like…

This Lyons-based quartet’s latest album, which will be celebrated during a May 9 gig at the Boulder Theater (followed by appearances at the Gold Hill Inn and Swallow Hill on May 29 and June 6, respectively), stays true to bluegrass’s traditions without coming across like a musty antique, due in…

I appreciate bands that try to do something different. I do. But, seriously, whoever came up with the idea of rapping over a horrific mesh of post-rock with jam-band tendencies — it sounds like Phish outtakes as produced by Tortoise — needs to sit down and re-evaluate their record collection…

Chad “Chadzilla” Johnson has kept time for a slew of local musicians in addition to filling the drum throne for his main projects, Double Parked, Chadzilla & the Asteroids and Chadzilla3. Here, he teams up with Ed Contreras for the world-percussion-driven endeavor known as Istari, which got its start performing…

Although the lo-fi quality of this recording rivals releases on the Siltbreeze imprint, its songs are similarly worthwhile for their earnest sonic character. Matt Sage, formerly of Castles and Swordfight, is the sole performer and songwriter in M. Pyres, and he brings with him an undeniable knack for superlatively catchy,…

It’s official. King Rat’s Luke Schmaltz & Jennifer “Mama” Foreman have assumed ownership of Bender’s Tavern. They both started working at the spot right after it opened in 2004, and Schmaltz has been the general manager for the past three years. For now, things will be as is at Bender’s,…

So I got a pretty rad note the other day from my friend Suzanne about my most recent obsession, Danielle Ate the Sandwich. Suzanne, God bless her soul, spends countless hours analyzing and ruminating the business aspect of, well, the music business. Unlike a good number of us, who are…

Kind of a freak about Ol’ Blue Eyes, so pardon the giddiness in advance, but as we write this the Swayback are — well, who the hell are we kidding? probably barely coherent given this late hour and the fact that they’re in Hollywood right now hanging with Andy Johns…

All right, so, yesterday, the always dependable, completely reliable, trustworthy sleuths over at TMZ posted a series of photos of some guy, who looks a helluva lot like Tupac, that were allegedly snapped in some bar in the Big Easy last weekend. Seems viable. I mean, everybody knows that a…