To call Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus and Smog’s Bill Callahan icons of indie rock is no mere hyperbole. But besides the fact that the two have birthed thousands of misfit, hyper-intellectual troubadours, the parallels in their careers are uncanny. Both began recording in the late ’80s; both released EPs on the…
Plenty of Rage Against the Machine and Soundgarden buffs have been hoping Audioslave would produce a great album on its second try, but they’ll have to settle for pretty good. Although Out of Exile is solid and listenable, Chris Cornell, Tom Morello, Brad Wilk and Tim Commerford are ultimately pushing…
Talk about the triumph of the team concept. 534 is an intermittently entertaining listen, yet the limited success it achieves is owed not to Memphis Bleek, whose name is in front of the title, but to the formidable support staff assembled around him. Bleek isn’t a bad rapper, but he’s…
Growing up in the English countryside with parents who are into American folk isn’t exactly the most obvious path to acquiring a taste for raw funk. Nonetheless, as Will Holland, aka Quantic, dug through crates as a teen, he developed a penchant for clean horns, fuzzy bass and growling soul…
Colder Than Fargo’s debut, In the Basement of the Chapel, strove to embody its name: Frigid and hymnal, the disc was a lucid — if occasionally flawed — translation of simplicity and soul into song. But Blue (whose release will be celebrated Friday, June 3, at the hi-dive, with Channing…
“Landlocked Hip Hop” kicks off this CD with a hilariously pointed definition of Colorado rap, replete with satirical references to banging snow bunnies and celebrating “white boys with dreads.” Fortunately, the scene also encompasses D.O., whose impressive musical and lyrical statements do credit to the Ground Zero Movement, from which…
A Brit at birth, Richie Hawtin spent the majority of his formative years just within the borders of our neighbor to the north. While machine-assembly opportunities lured Hawtin’s father south to Detroit, it was machine-inspired music that later motivated his teenage son. One of the top two contenders for techno…
In a world where indie rock has become the Next Big Thing and marketing plans exist before the music, Pinback’s sincerity is a joy. Zach Smith and Rob Crow have no identifiable image, no signature wardrobes or hairstyles, and they’ve created three albums of such peculiar pop that no major-label…
Imagine the all-employee band at a Guitar Center company picnic — only instead of washed-up ponytail dudes and zit-faced Slipknot geeks, the guys on stage are true hipster bluebloods: One was a founding member of screamo forebear Nation of Ulysses, and the whole group has collaborated twice with the post-rock…
Once upon a time, sworn fealty to the Cure meant absolute disdain for AC/DC — and vice versa. Morrissey was Bluto to Axl Rose’s Popeye. Back then, It Dies Today wouldn’t have had an audience. But today, thanks to labels like Level-Plane and Trustkill, kids in black-framed glasses rub shoulders…
Chic beats, A Certain Ratio riffs and David Bowie allure? Few bands in the so-called death-disco explosion of this millennium have straddled such disparate elements with the grace and glamour of Glass Candy and the Shattered Theater. Anchored in a punk ethic that’s more Bikini Kill than Blondie, the Portland…
In Brazil, Bebel Gilberto has been in front of the public’s peepers since her childhood, thanks to the fame of her performer parents, Micha and Joo Gilberto, and she made her recorded debut way back in 1986. In contrast, she was little known here until 2000’s Tanto Tempo, a Latin…
Strike up the ticker-tape parade: After almost a year of being lost in space, Thank God for Astronauts is re-entering the atmosphere. Singer/guitarist Kent Phillips, guitarist Alisdair Rich, bassist Steve Jones and drummer Bryan Feuchtinger were last seen on stage together last summer; overwhelmed by outside stress and obligations –…
Nearly two decades after breaking up, the Smiths have become one of the most beloved acts to come out of the ’80s. Heralded groups like Bright Eyes, the Postal Service and Interpol owe a massive debt to Morrissey and company, who were named the most influential band ever by the…
We threw a bunch of stuff together. And it was really fun.” Even though Butchy Fuego just succeeded in reducing the origins of his band, Pit er Pat, to a two-sentence punchline, it’s an apt simplification. The Chicago-based ensemble of drummer Fuego, keyboardist Fay Davis-Jeffers and bassist Rob Doran came…
In a sense, artists have a duty to be as selfish and arrogant about the way they make their music as they can,” declares Porcupine Tree vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson. “I don’t believe Picasso made his paintings for anybody else, and that’s the way I think a true artist…
“We started out as a rhythm-and-blues/blues cover band,” recalls Todd Park Mohr. “It was basically a hobby. It was fun. We were too realistic to think that we’d end up doing it for the rest of our lives, for sure.” That’s because when Big Head Todd and the Monsters formed…
News flash: Critics who liken System to Yes in Mezmerize reviews are idiots. Not only do such comparisons unfairly raise the hopes of Jon Anderson fans who’ve waited decades to hear fresh lyrics about faeries, but they obscure salient points about the new disc’s less obvious attributes — like, for…
Four Tet’s Everything Ecstatic is the latest entry in the annals of kitchen-sink electronica, an ever-expanding genre that cuts and pastes together bits of ’60s psych, jazz fusion, hip-hop, folk and all points in between. Devoid of normal song structure or the usual sonic reference points, Ecstatic recalls the cluttered…
If you’ve been waiting for Dave Matthews to release a recording capable of justifying his massive popularity, keep waiting. His latest isn’t so much terrible as typical — a minor variation on the college rock he’s been making since his first batch of supporters actually were in college. Progress? None…
For those who’ve longed for the poetic license of Morrissey crammed into the keyboard-tinted riffs of the Cars, leave it to the limeys to satisfy the demand. Maximo Park has already received panting preemptory praise and A Certain Trigger actually bears out much of that premature ejaculation. “Apply Some Pressure”…
For the acutely sensitive among us, self-image is often defined by what one doesn’t want to be. With Making Beds in a Burning House, the new full-length by Troubled Hubble, the Illinois quartet makes it absolutely clear what kind of trendy genres it rejects: rock revival, dance punk, post-hardcore, freak…
