Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. In the beginning, synth-pop pioneers like Bronski Beat, Soft Cell and Heaven 17 collectively shared the DNA of American soul, ’60s pop and funk, coupled with a limited ability to re-create that music on conventional instruments. To make up for this shortcoming,…
Kurt Cobain loved the Melvins. And if he hadn’t shot himself into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, then biographers and dutiful note-takers of music history might not have paid any attention to this small fact. And here’s another one: Without the influence of the Melvins, there would be…
Get Three Coffins Ready doesn’t need no stinkin’ vocalist. The Denver-based purely instrumental band makes dance-floor toe-stepping goodness that’s as much sock-hop shtick as it is rockabilly crass. Riding the waves of ’50s and ’60s beach-bum pop and crashing it into mid-’70s grungy garage, Get Three Coffins Ready offers an…
Mike Doughty is not your boyfriend. Maybe there’s one woman in New York who can say he is, but that’s it. If you think you’re his girlfriend, that makes you a stalker. And that’s just creepy. “I get a lot of them, that’s for sure,” says Doughty from his home…
Matt Fecher would make a great politician. When asked even the most innocuous of questions — like how the upcoming South Park Music Festival will be different from last year’s, for instance — he pauses, then carefully chooses each word of his response so as not to alienate anyone even…
The notion behind France’s Nouvelle Vague — ’70s- and ’80s-vintage new-wave songs as crooned by sexy femmes over acoustic, bossa-nova-inflected grooves — could hardly seem more gimmicky. So the biggest surprise about the group isn’t its success, which is at least partly due to the cleverness of the concept. Rather,…
The Queers have been around forever — or so it seems. Any snot-nosed kid who’s ever dipped into the punk scene, even if it was only for a summer, has probably elbowed a few faces in the pit at a Queers show, or at least bought (and later sold) an…
Jurassic 5 is known for its throwback sound, which harks back to hip-hop’s golden age. Although purists have always gravitated toward the group’s old-school-inspired music, the crew is looking at gaining a wider audience with its latest effort, Feedback, which features collaborations with Dave Matthews and super-producer Scott Storch, as…
Idlewild is a disappointment when compared with OutKast’s Speakerboxx/The Love Below double-header. But it’s also an entirely different animal — a soundtrack yoked to the like-titled film’s strained attempt to transplant hip-hop to the 1930s. Given this unwieldy concept, André and Big Boi deserve a few props for producing an…
Even when Primal Scream didn’t match the creative heights reached by Screamadelica’s rave-worthy blissouts or the electro-punk of XTRMNTR, the group never lacked self-confidence. After all, it coaxed (and kept) My Bloody Valentine’s reclusive Kevin Shields out of hibernation and had the courage to embrace sinewy dark wave long before…
So how does an album like Port of Miami — built on run-of-the-mill drug-trafficking tales, odes to dead presidents and standard street-life themes — debut at number one on the Billboard charts? Apparently, it’s all in the delivery. Fact is, Rick Ross isn’t saying anything that hasn’t been said a…
On 2004’s Consider the Birds, Wovenhand’s David Eugene Edwards made the Old Testament new again via lyrics that doubled as fierce and unforgiving divination. This time around, his intentions are just as prophetic; the title may reference an artistic style, but it’s also an allusion to Moses. Musically, though, Mosaic…
Who hasn’t played in Autokinoton? Since its inception a few years ago, the band has eaten up and spit out members all along the Front Range. The most recent lineup — which included vocalist Joe Triscari, drummer Andrew Segreti (of Bailer), guitarist Justin Slojkowski (ex-Season at Sea) and Auto-K originals…
Bizzy Bone, The Midwest Cowboy (Real Talk). This is already Bizzy Bone’s third album of 2006, and it sounds like it. Denver-based producer Playalitical sets nearly every track to the stuttering, double-time rhythm that Bone Thugs-N-Harmony made famous, and aside from the pillow-talking R&B of “Lovey, Dovey,” the skimpy melodies…
Sludgy and mercilessly gloomy, Facedowninshit is not the band to seek for an uplifting pep talk or a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. Dwelling in the same misanthropic, doom-saturated stylistic bog that made Eyehategod such a party, guitarist Jason Crumer, bassist Waylon Riffs (yeah, right) and drummer Ryan Wolfe fill…
Even though this Georgia-based combo’s latest disc, The Optimist’s Club, was issued earlier this year by Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records, it sounds like a product of Elephant 6, an imprint associated in these parts with the Apples in Stereo — and no wonder. Cookies leader Jason NeSmith previously…
To listen to country radio in recent years, you’d think human frailty had been tossed on the ash heap of history, for nearly every story pays off with an upbeat, morally uplifting climax. Lee Ann Womack, however, dominated this year’s Country Music Critics’ Poll not only by reviving the classic…
Jon Mikl Thor first came to prominence in the early ’70s as a completely unabashed impersonator of the Norse god Thor. Since then, the Canada native — whose albums are rife with, at best, second-tier epic metal that would make even the most shmaltzy of metal bands blush — has…
The word “clit” entered into the Star Wars fans’ lexicon a few years back when Los Angeles-based street-punk outfit Clit 45 quarreled with some Lucasites outside the premiere for Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. Sci-fi geeks had been in line for days waiting for the opening of the…
Most folks would rather shove their hand into a whirring garbage disposal than check out other people’s vacation snapshots. But not singer-songwriter Jason Trachtenburg, who uses photographic slides — a previous generation’s chosen method of preserving memories — as musical inspiration. (Judged by this standard, Head Like a Kite, which…
Shortly after A Tribe Called Quest released its final album, 1998’s Love Movement, the animosity within the group was so prevalent that it would have taken a miracle for the members to talk to each other again. But now, after a couple of solo albums and side projects, Q-Tip, Phife…
Like a 10 p.m. buzz deteriorating into a 2 a.m. depression, Centro-Matic’s raucous, feedback-drenched hootenannies career headlong into perfectly twangy, tear-in-your-Lone Star balladry. Exhausted coal miners drink somber toasts to fallen friends while nostalgic grandmothers teach their grandchildren the two-step. When Will Johnson and Centro-Matic take the stage — be…
